CHAPTER VII: EL FILIBUSTERISMO

LESSON 1: TO THE FILIPINO AND THEIR GOVERNMENT

INTRODUCTION

A long dark past of Spanish rule sets until there occurs, in 1872, a turning point, the initial sign of a
shift of consciousness from blind acceptance of Spain's presence to an awareness of the causes behind the
people's suffering. In that year, the public execution of three reformist priests stirred up so much public
sympathy and outrage that the bonds of subservience and gratitude toward Spain and the Frias were
seriously weakened.

The Indio is deemed unable to comprehend her situation rationally, thus she reacts blindly in the gut,
to mounting irritants impinging upon her. Only with the advent of Rizal and the Illustrado is there supposed to
clear understanding of the cause of dissatisfaction. Only with the founding of Andres Bonifacio Katipunan's
secret society is there an organization with clear strategies. When Katipunan was superseded by Emilio
Aguinaldo’s republican government, the Filipino people as seen to be finally released not only from the
colonial mother but also to the dark past. 1898-The history of “failure” ends with the birth of the secular,
progressive enlightened republic.

The title of Jose Rizal’s second novel appeared in 1891. It gave way to controversy on what the word
“Filibustero” would really mean, not only in the Philippines, but also for the American perspective.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
At the end of the lesson, the student should be able to:
1. Identify the racial terms and the political terms that are used in Noli Me Tangere but not in El
Filibusterismo.
2. Define each racial and political term used in El Filibusterismo.
3. Interpret the message of Rizal’s El Filibusterismo.
4. Compare the events in El Filibusterismo to the present situation of our nation.

LESSON PROPER
Rizal lamented the fact that Philippine traditions were no longer authentic because their origins were
either forgotten or patently foreign. The forgetting of origins marked the onset of darkness.” These traditions
[of links with Sumatra]” he laments, were completely lost, just like mythology and genealogies of which the
old historians speak, thanks to the seal of the religious in extirpating every remembrance of our nationality of
paganism or idolatry.”

Philippine literary histories speak of the lost literature of the lowlands being replaced by religious
poetry written at first by Spanish missionaries and then by selected Indios who had served as translators for
the Spaniards. Entitled “love for the holy family”, and “God the light of the world”, Mary, the star of the sea’,
guides men in their voyage through the stormy darkness of sin and ignorance.

🞚 1872-1896 and 1898-national spirit was born and reached maturity in the struggle for
independence.
🞚 1890-Jose Rizal, the foremost Filipino intellectual and patriot which the 19th century, provided in
his annotations to a 17th-century Spanish text legitimization for the view that with Spanish rule the
people “forgot their native alphabet, their songs, their poetry, their laws in other to parrot other
doctrines that they did not understand.
🞚 “They lost all the confidence in their past, all faith in their present, and all hope for the future,”

🞚 Rizal had labored for a year in the British Museum to document the image of a flourishing
pre-colonial civilization, the lost Eden, which the offspring of an era of enlightened awakened
consciousness and self-assertion, felt burdened to put in writing.
🞚 Rizal construction of a usable past effect privileged the status of the Illustrado, the liberal educated
elite that viewed itself as among other things, release from the thought world of history-less,
superstitious, manipulated masses, the so-called “pobres y ignorantes”.
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 🞚 1960-1970- endlessly debating whether Rizal was a realist or idealist, whether or not he is deserving
of the veneration he received.
🞚 They continue to probe the intention behind his actions, speeches, and writing and attempt to
clarify his contribution to the process of nation-building. Clarify his contribution to the process.
🞚 yet he is an evolutionist premise, particularly the notion of emergence itself, which belongs to the
realm of the family, “common sense”.

History of “FILIBUSTERO”
⮚ Rizal first heard the word “Filibustero” when he was only 11 years old, in the year 1872

⮚ Also in the year 1872, he stated that the word “Filibustero” was common and circulating among the
members of the native elite and asserted that “the common people” don’t know the word
⮚ Rizal describes a “Filibustero” as a rather dangerous patriot who will soon be hanged or a
presumptuous fellow
⮚ “Anyone pursuing the idea of bringing down the Spanish rule through an armed uprising, the mass
murder of Spaniards, and the establishment of an independent government was undoubtedly
“dangerous” to the colonial state but a “patriot” to the homeland”, as the Spanish would describe a
“Filibustero”
⮚ On August 4, 1884, he wrote an article for El Progreso, titled “El Filibusterismo en Filipinas”, Rizal
stated that there were no Filibustero in the Philippines, rather the word was employed recklessly and
anyone who sought a modern and enlightened world was immediately labeled as such
⮚ In 1890, Wenceslao Retana offered to the Real Academia Española a specific meaning to the word
Filibustero, defined it as, “In the Philippines, it is applied to one who, eager for the independence of
the country, resorts to various extralegal proceedings to reach the objective that he pursues”
⮚ Anderson proposed that the word Filibusterismo “drifted” from Cuba to Spain and “across the Indian
Ocean to Manila”
⮚ Before 1872, the word Filibustero could be associated with some natives of the Spanish Philippines,
known as Manila men

Filibustero: Piracy in the Caribbean

By the 1520s, Spain’s colonization of the Americas and the domination of its riches were already
challenged by corsairs. Tortuga was the pirates’ capital of the Caribbean where some of the most violent
attacks during the 17th century were launched. What made piracy political was its pursuit as state policy was
emblematized when Francis Drake was recognized as a patriot in England but his reputation in Spain was of a
pirate. John Anderson suggested that “piracy originated in and was fueled by Old World rivalries”

Benedict Anderson (the author) emphasizes that piracy was an unofficial means of going to war. A group of
“true pirates” stated that they were “enemies of all states and were not confined to one place of origin.”
⮚ In Philippine history, the famous corsairs that challenged the Spanish rule were Limahong in the
1570s and Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga) in the 1660s
⮚ Bucanero and Filibustero emerged from the world of pirates in the late-16th Century Caribbean

⮚ “The history of bucanero is straightforward, but that of Filibustero is not”, said John Lipski

⮚ “The history of this word (filibustero) is revealed to be confusing, tortuous, and contradictory, and all
but impossible to establish with certainty” added Lipski

In 1783, in Santo Domingo, some Spanish-language documents showed records that the word was
already part of the spoken languages in the Caribbean. Lipski believes that Filibustero belonged only to the
slang of the seafaring pirates, Spanish soldiers, and sailors who combated. Spaniards resisted the term
“Filibustero” but rather encouraged to use traditional words such as pirate, ladron, and enemigo (enemy). In
1836, “Filibustero” made it to Pichardo’s dictionary but with a note stating that it was a corruption of
Flibotero.
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 At the start of the 19th century, piracy was no longer the threat to the Spanish settlers that it used to
be. During this period, the pirate was cast simultaneously in two distinct and contrasting images: a fearless
daredevil seeking adventure on the high seas and a dangerous and cruel plunderer moved by greed. As
Gerassi-Navarro’s reading of these pirate novels indicates, “An emblematic figure of independence and
boldness, the pirate captures the spirit behind the desire for political autonomy.”

Filibustering: America’s Manifest Destiny

The complex image of terror and freedom reverberated not only in pirate people but in the lives of
adventurers mainly from the United States, who in the first half of the nineteenth century, as Robert May
puts it, “raised or participated in private military forces that either invaded or formally at peace.” He may
contends that filibustering dates back to the 1790s, when the “pioneering filibusters including US Senator
William Blount of Tennessee chose as their destination neighboring Spanish colonies in North America.
Among such expeditions in 1806 Francisco de Miranda led some two hundred recruits on an expedition from
New York port to his native Venezuela.
Venezuelan-born Narciso Lopez’s attempts to overthrow Spanish control of Cuba in May 1850 and
1851 that the word filibuster evoking sea-based piracy would enter circulation in the American press.
⮚ In September 1851 religious journal in Boston [cautioned] to no effect that this “vulgarism” might
become accepted language if the press kept utilizing it.
⮚ When Central Americans of the mid-nineteenth century applied Filibustero to William Walker and
other soldiers of fortune, they were reactivating a word that had previously enjoyed currency in
the Caribbean region as a result of the extensive activities of pirates during earlier centuries.
⮚ In the age of Manifest Destiny, even US military officers were supportive of, or at least receptive
to, filibustering.

Shanghai, Cuba, and Manila

✧ In Cuba’s case, the Creole sugar planters feared that Spain would capitulate to the British campaign to
end slavery, which they believe will cause the ruin of the sugar industry.
✧ Marshalling hundreds of American recruits, Lopez’s filibusters in Cuba failed.

✧ On January 3, 1853, Lopez’s filibustering expedition to Cuba set the context for the word to be
employed to connote legislative obstruction on the floor of the 1st Congress, the word is first used in
this sense of January 3, 1853.
✧ By 1863, filibustering had become the standard name for the practice of using extended debate to
block legislation.
✧ The most notorious of the American adventurers was William Walker, the so-called King of Filibusters
who was a former part-owner of the New Orleans Daily Crescent.
✧ Filibustering touched Canada, Cuba, Nicaragua, Mexico, Ecuador, Honduras, and to Hawaii.

Manilamen and Global Seafaring

✧ The last galleon sailed from Manila for Acapulco, Mexico in 1811, returning to the Philippines in 1815

✧ However, from the inception of this transpacific trade in 1572, galleons were manned by peninsular
Spanish and Mexican Creole sailors as well as Indio seaman, the latter sometimes comprised
two-thirds of the crew (Taylor 1922, 651)
✧ Many Indios deserted and remained in California or Mexico eventually establishing settlements such
as in Louisiana (Espina 1988; Mercene 2007 1-42.)
✧ Several Indios were also onboard American vessels that went to Alaska for the fur trade in the 1780s
and 1790s (Buchhldt 1992, 3-11)
✧ These early seafarers as well as those who came after them in the nineteenth century were known in
the English-speaking world as Manilamen.

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 ✧ Manila was a place name that, unlike Las Islas Filipinas was recognizable in colonial ports and the
world’s metropolises
✧ Manila was a global brand name attached to tobacco from “Ilocos hene ” ”Manila cigar” and abaca
from Bicol, hence ‘Manila hemp” and “Manila paper”
✧ In English language texts, both governmental and private, seafarers and other labor migrants from
the Philippines were thus often known and recorded as ”Manila men” or “Manilamen” on rare
occasions as “Philippine Islanders”
✧ Manilamen were usually the steersmen or quarter masters on American sailing ships in the Pacific
noted Austin Craig (1940, 158)
✧ Hera Melville’s Moby Dic, first published in 1851 and based on the author’s own sailing experience,
gave recognition to Manilamen in the whaling industry at least as oarsmen, who were part of a
multiethnic force
✧ At the Philippine National Archives (PNA) one set of documents in 1852 reveals that nine men worked
as auxiliaries on an American whaling ship, The Aussel Gibbs
✧ In the argot of whaling these “lays” (the share in the proceeds of a voyage) were at the lowest end,
just a slight notch above what an inexperienced foremast hand would earn at one barrel for every
175 barrels, while the highest end a captain cold earns at one barrel for every twelve (Tower 1907,
91)
✧ Orton Netzorg’s annotation of Robert MacMicking’s Recollections of Manila and the Philippines
included a note concerning the widespread reputation of Manilamen as “highly capable crewmen” of
merchant vessels (MacMicking 1967, 31-32)
✧ Writing in 1850, McMicking himself reported that the literacy of “the Manilamen serving on board of
ships and composing their crews” was very impressive admitting that “This fact startled me at first
but it has been frequently remarked upon by people very strongly prejudiced in favor of white men,
and who despise the black skins of Manila men (ibid, 31).
✧ Much later, Graciano Lopez Jaena, in a speech delivered at the Ateneo Barcelona on 25 February
18189 and published in La Solidaridad in its issue of 28 February 1889, provided a transatlantic view
of these seafarers.
✧ Starting in 1869 the Manilamen settlers as well as transients, who were engaged in the pearl-shell
industry on Thursday Island off the northernmost tip of Queensland Australia (Aguilar 200, 180-90)
✧ The available evidence suggests that a sizeable number of men in the range of the thousand from the
Philippines were widely engaged as mariners and seagoing migrant workers in the nineteenth-century
✧ Their immersion in the glob; the maritime world would have differentiated them from other
inhabitants of the Philippines who did not have these experiences in ports and open sea.
✧ Seafaring by its very nature was highly specialized,” an occupation with significant psychological and
social ramifications for its workers “(Bolster 1990, 1774)
✧ Unlike the fluidities in Spanish colonial society and the social negotiations it engendered (cf. Aguilar
1998), the vessels where Manilamen worked were a type of total” institutio” that emphasized roles
and positions, hierarchy, and order.
✧ Among the nineteenth-century Manilamen the liberating dimension of the maritime world can
glimpsed in the readiness of seafarers to assert the terms of their contract, as did the nine men from
Zamboanga on the whaling vessels Aussel Gibbs, as well as Manilamen in Australia who in the 1890s
supported the revolution against Spain, as discussed in this article

Manilamen as Filibusterso-for-hire
⮚ The first known engagement of this nature occurred in November 1818 when Hypolite Bouchard, a
Frenchman who had taken on Argentine citizenship

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 ⮚ The Santa Rosa, commanded by the American Peter Corney, had a crew of about a hundred men:
thirty were Sandwich Islanders (Hawaiians), with the rest made up of Americans, Spaniards,
Portuguese, Creoles (Mexicans), Manilamen, Malays, and a few Englishmen (Mercene 2007, 52).
⮚ In February 1862 the governor of Kiangsu christened the Changsheng Jun, the Ever-Victorious Army,
out of enthusiasm for its performance (Smith 1978, 52).
⮚ In 1847 he sailed from New York to China, "where he got his first intoxicating taste of treaty port life"

⮚ 1849 he was sailing in a vessel commanded by his father, arriving in San Francisco in May 1850.

⮚ 1860 Ward was in China together with his younger brother Henry, who went into commission
business trading, while Ward was employed on the American "Admiral" Gough's pirate-suppression
steamer Confucius
⮚ Ward's acquaintance with a local businessman named Charles B. Hill and Gough's endorsement were
instrumental in his introduction to Yang Fang, a banker and former comprador of Jardine Matheson
and Company.
⮚ In Shanghai in 1860, Ward initially hired a bunch of American and European adventurers from among
discharged seamen, deserters, and other drifters, but they proved to be undisciplined.
⮚ At midcentury a considerable number of Manilamen were found in this part of China.

⮚ Earlier in 1853-1855 during the Small Sword Uprising, when secret society militia gangs mounted a
coup and took over Shanghai for seventeen months
⮚ In July 1860 Ward's force of "somewhere between one and two hundred Manilamen" successfully
assaulted Sung-Chiang
⮚ In later months, Ward employed greater numbers of Western mercenaries to officer his
"Manilamen," offering them thirty to fifty dollars per month. and "the promise of large but indefinite
emoluments on the recapture of any towns or strong positions occupied by the rebels." Despite
unfavorable publicity and the risk of imprisonment for violating neutrality, recruits flocked to Ward's
standard.
⮚ At about the same time across the Pacific, during the US Civil War, for evident economic gain as in the
case of Ward's army in Shanghai, foreign-born immigrants and mercenaries enlisted primarily with
the troops of the Union, although some joined the Confederate army.

Conclusion
Rizal, a writer in exile, nonetheless used the image of the filibustero to conjure a possibly explosive
end of Spanish rule in the Philippines. Despite his minimal knowledge of political theory, and despite his
distancing of Filibustero from piracy (a tie that could not be fully severed) and the complex politics of the
Caribbean and the American filibusters, by associating Simoun with Cuba-the birthing ground as it were of a
revolution that was at the same time homegrown-Rizal uncannily called upon the imagery of American
filibusters, from Narciso López to José Martí and the Cuban exiles who longed for the island's independence,
but with a twist.

CLASS ASSESSMENT: DRAWING OR SKETCH

Direction:
In one long-sized coupon bond, try to compare the current situation of our country to the events in
the novel El Filibusterismo through a drawing or sketch. At the back of your coupon bond, right your
interpretation of your own work.

REFERENCE:
● Rizal: El Filibusterismo (Subversion), 2010. Translated by Leon Ma. Guerrero
● Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, published by Ateneo University

Prepared by:

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BRENDA LOU D. DELLOSA
Instructor I

CHAPTER VIII: RIZAL’S CHANGING VIEW ON SPANISH RULE AND EL FILIBUSTERISMO

LESSON 1: THE INDOLENCE OF FILIPINO PEOPLE

INTRODUCTION
The only way we can serve our nation is by being honest, no matter how annoying it may be. In the
Philippines, one's own mistakes, flaws, and other people's wrongdoings are attributed to indolence. In the
Philippines, it gets worse for someone who looks for the cause of problems outside of conventional wisdom,
just as it did in the Middle Ages when someone sought an explanation for events other than those caused by
demonic influences. The Filipinos, who rank among the world's most active populations, are unlikely to deny
this admission. But rather than making an exception for the sake of the rule, we should endeavor to advance
the interests of our nation by declaring things that we know to be untrue. Just as a chilly environment
encourages work and action, a hot environment demands the individual stillness and relaxation. Because of
this, the German is lazier than the Frenchman, who is lazier than the Spaniard. The attempt to live according
to the nature of his nation under a different sky and heat is what kills the Europeans in hot places. It is only
fair that the earth yields a hundred-fold because an hour's work under that scorching sun, amid harmful
influences arising from nature in motion, is equivalent to a day's work in a temperate climate.

Some slaves beg their owners to beat them because, if they didn't, they wouldn't be showing them
love. What truly occurs in such a situation is that the masters are unable to comprehend their servants, who
just ask that they be willing to bear the consequences of their own mistakes. Philippines: Because there is no
press freedom in the country, those who enjoy reading newspapers and learning the news must usually make
do with simple articles on morals, suitable for children, and lengthy, pompous praises of the officials. long
analyses of the humidity, temperature, hotness, or coldness, and whether or not it will rain soon. "The
priority of a future governor-general of those Islands should be the selection of personnel with practical
experience in the provinces, those who might be his official or personal representative." (Page 165 of Manuel
Scheidnagel's book Paseos Por El Mundo, Madrid, 1878). Because of this, the majority of Spaniards saw
political and colonial policy as simply issues of work or hunger.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
1. Compare the past and present traditions and the impact of each to our society.
2. Describe the context of Filipino History and Culture.
3. Understand historical events and trends.
4. Gain valuable perspectives on the problems of our modern society.

LESSON PROPER
When a patient's state is assessed as a result of a protracted chronic illness, it is determined if the
cause of the patient's condition is the protracted chronic sickness itself or the medication being used to treat
it. Only the regular people, the curious people, shake their heads and are unable to decide. Be grateful if
these new white corpuscles, which were cancer in an earlier creature, can endure the system's corruption
and avoid spreading the disease! We've already mentioned a climate-related propensity, without which the
race would vanish after being subjugated to excessive labor in a tropical nation. We're not trying to place all
the blame on the doctor and less on the patient. The Malayan Filipinos engaged in active trading before the
arrival of the Europeans, not only with one another but also with all the nearby nations.
The term "indolence" has been grossly overused to mean a lack of enthusiasm for one's work and a
lack of vitality and this misuse has gone unpunished since it was mocked.
Dr. Hirth translated a 13th-century Chinese document that describes China's mainly trade ties to the
islands. Pigafetta, who traveled with Magellan in 1521, was immediately struck by the locals' politeness and
friendliness. He mentions the solid gold vessels and utensils as well as the gold and silver he discovered in
the islands of Luzon, Cebu, and Butuan in his Description of the Americas. These Siamese ships, carrying
slaves and gold, paid specific taxes to the island's ruler. The Sultan of Borneo's son, who had taken Sarawak
for him as admiral of his fleet, was introduced to Magellan in 1521. Pigafetta describes Paragua's abundant
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food supply and its residents, practically all of whom worked their own fields. The Magellan expedition
survivors were welcomed and well-fed on this island. Later, the same survivors took control of a ship, looted
and sacked it, and imprisoned the chief along with his son and brother.
When the Spanish captured the Paraguayan leader in 1521, they wanted 1,000 measures of rice, 20
pigs, 20 goats, and 450 chickens as ransom. The earliest instance of piracy in Philippine history is this one.
They voluntarily increased the ransom by including coconuts, bananas, and sugar-cane jars filled with palm
wine. Several traders from Luzon greeted Legazpi's expedition in Butuan with boats loaded with porcelain,
iron, wax cloths, and other goods. All of the southern islands had plenty of activity, trade, and mobility.
"Abounding in provisions, with mines and washings of gold, and peopled with natives," was the island of
Cebu when they arrived. Famine followed the city's forced capture, destruction, and burning. Mr. Morga
served as Manila's lieutenant governor for seven years before being named a criminal judge for Mexico's
Audiencia and an Inquisition Counselor.
He wrote about the mistakes made by the natives when it came to farming, stock keeping, growing
chickens, raising cotton, and weaving textiles with great caution and care. In spite of the fact that his eighth
chapter is the longest chapter in his book, chapter VIII of his work is entirely devoted to this dying activity and
forgotten industry. When Dr. Hans Meyer questioned whether ancient Filipinos would become the same
sluggish, authoritarian beings that populate modern society, Dr. Meyer refuted the claim. What is now
complacently attributed to them as being their ethics and way of life was not the case. Then, how and how
did that ambitious and active native infidel become the sluggish Christian? What causes operated to awake
this terrible predisposition from its lethargy? How is it that the Filipino people, so fond of its customs as to
border on routine, have given up its ancient habits of work, of trade, of navigation, etc., even to the extent of
completely forgetting its past?

History of the “Indolence of the Filipinos”

✧ Is an exploratory essay published in La Solidaridad in Madrid in 1890.

✧ It was written by José Rizal as a response to the accusation of Indio or Malay indolence.

✧ It has five installments through the La Solidaridad, the official newspaper of the Philippine Ilustrados
from July 15 to September 15, 1890.

Admitting the Existence of Indolence

Rizal admits that indolence does exist among Filipinos, but it cannot be attributed (something) to the
troubles and backwardness (less progress) of the country; rather it is the effect of the backwardness and
troubles experienced by the country. Past writings on indolence revolve(circulate) only on either denying or
affirming, and never studying its causes in depth. One must study the causes of indolence, Rizal says, before
curing it. He therefore enumerates the causes of indolence and elaborates on the circumstances that have
led to it. The hot climate, he points out, is a reasonable predisposition(tendency) for indolence. Filipinos
cannot be compared to Europeans, who live in cold countries and who must exert much more effort at work.
An hour's work under the Philippine sun, he says, is equivalent to a day's work in temperate regions.

Rizal says that an illness (disease) will worsen if the wrong treatment is given. The same applies to
indolence. People, however, should not lose hope in fighting indolence. Even before the Spaniards arrived,
Rizal argues, the early Filipinos were already carrying out trade within provinces and with other neighboring
countries; they were also engaged in agriculture and mining; some natives even spoke Spanish. All this
disproves the notion that Filipinos are by nature indolent. Rizal ends by asking what then would have caused
Filipinos to forget their past. He enumerates several reasons that may have caused the Filipinos' cultural and
economic corruption which are: wars: conflict among Spaniards, natives, and Moros, invasion of Pirates which
resulted in the diminished number of native Filipinos, forced labor, Filipinos being sent abroad to fight for
Spain or shipyards to construct vessels, some Filipinos hide in the forest and mountains and
abandoned(discontinue) their farmlands (because of fear), and Limited Training and Education.
The Filipinos, who can measure up with the most active peoples in the world, will doubtless not
repudiate this admission, for it is true that there one works and struggles against the climate, against nature
and men. A hot, climate requires the individual to quiet and rest, just as cold incites labor and action. For
this reason, the Spaniard is more indolent than the Frenchman; the Frenchman more so than the German.
The country is surrounded by a numerous train of servants, never going afoot but riding in a carriage.
Spaniards keep complaining and yet they live and eat better, they work for themselves to get rich, with the
hope of a future, free and respected, while the poor colonist, the indolent colonist, is badly nourished, has no
hope, toils for others, and works under force and compulsion.

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 The fact is that in tropical countries violent work is not a good thing as it is in cold countries, there it is
death, destruction, annihilation. Nature knows this and like a just mother has therefore made the earth more
fertile, more productive, as a compensation. The evil is not that indolence exists more or less latently but
that it is fostered and magnified.

Attributes and causes of the Filipino Indolence:

1. No studies of its causes in depth – Past writings on indolence revolve(circulate) only on either denying or
affirming, and never studying its causes in depth. One must study the causes of indolence, before curing
it.
2. Hot climate - Filipinos cannot be compared to Europeans, who live in cold countries and who must exert
much more effort at work. An hour ' s work under the Philippine sun, he says, is equivalent to a day ' s
work in temperate regions.
3. A Chronic Illness - an illness will worsen if the wrong treatment is given.
“In a long chronic illness; instead of examining the patient’s organs to determine its cause
the attending physician believes or put the blame on the patient’s poor constitution, on its

climate, or to its surroundings. While the patient breaths, we must not lose hope, and
however late we be, a judicious examination is never superfluous… Indolence in the
Philippines is a chronic malady, but not a hereditary one.”
4. Wars - the inhabitants of the Philippines were dragged to maintain the honor of Spain (thousands and
thousands of Filipinos were sent but nothing was said if they ever returned to their homes). Great
diminution of the natives because the governors got them as crews for the vessels they send out.
5. Piratical Attacks – the devastation of the terrible Pirates burned down the towns, captured and enslaved
men which Reduced more and more the number of inhabitants of the Philippines, disarmed the people
and subjected to tributes so that they were left without the means to defend themselves.
6. Attitude of the Friars - at that time, the friars advised their poor parishioners:
● to stop work in the mines,
● to abandon their industries,
● to destroy their looms and point them that heaven is their sole hope
● The friars told them that it is easier for a poor man to enter heaven than for a rich man
4. Lessening encouragement to Labor - Trade contact or relations between the Borneans, Siamese,
Cambodians, and Japanese nations were being cut off and the coast-wide trade which was flourishing
before disappeared
5. Miserly return for one’s Labor – the selfish, greedy, mean Encomenderos were:
● reduced many to slavery
● compelled Filipinos to work for their benefit
● Made them sell their products at an insignificant price or for nothing or cheated them with
false measures
● Treated them like slaves
6. Gambling - The sugal (from the Spanish word jugar, to gamble) indicates that gambling was unknown in the
Philippines before the Spaniards came but it became an addiction to many Filipinos when the Spaniards
introduced this to Indios. Balasa from the Spanish word barajar, the introduction of playing cards and
cockfighting were some of the games that Filipinos became addicted to.
7. Fiestas - Filipinos were much less lazy before the word miracle was introduced into their language. When
Christianity was introduced, Filipinos were obliged to give their contribution to a large number of fiestas,
lengthy masses, novenae, processions, rosaries, and other religious activities.
8. Curtailment of individual liberty – Every movement or actions are monitored. Individual liberty is being
cut off or if you don’t follow their rules, you will be accused of being a Filibustero (rebel) or a suspect.
Filipinos lack of confidence in the future and even Uncertainty of reaping the fruits of their labor.
9. Death of Trade in the Philippines - The state has no encouragement, aid pertaining to commerce or
agriculture. The products coming from the Philippines were burdened with imposts and duties and have
no free entry in the ports of the mother country and the consumption of the products are not encouraged.
Due to the fraudulent (dishonest, deceitful) manipulations of the Chinese, the Filipino industries were
dying. there is no help from the government nor moral support.
10. Ownership of the big estates by the friars - the best estates, the best tracts of land in some provinces
were in the hands of the religious corporations particularly the Dominican friars. They have deceived
many by making them believe that those estates were prospering because those were under their
8
 supervision, that the Filipino should give them their lands using their faith that the heavens will bless and
favor them.
11. Limited Training and Education which developed inferiority among Filipinos - the students have to
contend with the daily preaching that lowers human dignity, gradually or brutally killing their self-respect.
Priests who boldly declared that it is evil for the Filipinos to know Castilian, that the Filipinos should not be
separated from his carabao, and that he should not have any further ambition.
12. Abuses and discriminations - The exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or
service by the land lords (encomienderos) who implemented force labor, Kasama system and the
Monopoly of government officials that does not seek market for its products and no aid for poor crops.
13. Vicious dressing of the intelligence and will – the state and the church continuously say to a child not to
aspire to be greater than the curate and that they belong to an inferior race! as it is repeated so often, it
has inevitably engraved in his mind and thence it seals and shapes all his actions. Filipinos being ridiculed
with cruel sarcasm.
14. Lack of national sentiment - The lack of a national sentiment of unity among Filipinos causes more
inferiority. Deprived of the right of association, expression of emotional ideas, feelings, etc., therefore,
they were weak and inert (inactive, unmotivated, passive). Scarcity of any opposition to the measures that
are prejudicial to the people and the absence of any initiative that will redound to their welfare. The
Filipinos’ spirits were transformed according to the taste of the nation that imposed upon them its God
and its laws instead.
15. False Teaching or wrong doctrine – The church used their powers to influence Filipinos in all areas of their
lives for their own benefits. There was a crooked system of religion. The friars taught the naïve Filipinos
that it was easier for a poor man to enter heaven, and so they preferred not to work and remain poor so
that they could easily enter heaven after they died. Keeping the Filipinos in fear and uneducated makes it
easier for them to manipulate and enslave them.

Spaniards Insisted to Filipinos that to get happiness it is necessary for him to lay aside his dignity as
rational creature, to attend mass, to believe what has told him, to pay what is demanded for him, to pay and
forever to pay; to work, suffer and be silent, without aspiring to anything, without aspiring to know or even to
understand Spanish, without separating himself from his carabao, as the priests shamelessly say, without
protesting against any injustice, against any arbitrary action, against an assault, against an insult; that is, not
to have heart, brain or spirit: a creature with arms and purse full of gold. There’s the ideal native.
Nurtured by the example of anchorites of a contemplative and lazy life, the natives spend their time
giving their gold to the Church in the hope of miracles and other wonderful things. Their will is hypnotized:
from childhood they learn to act mechanically, without knowledge of the object, thanks to the exercises
imposed upon them from the tenderness years of praying for whole hours in an unknown tongue, of
venerating things that they do not understand, of accepting beliefs that are not explained to them to having
absurdities imposed upon them, while the protests of reason are repressed.

The following are proofs according to historians that Filipinos are not Indolent:
1. Filipinos’ courtesy & kindness towards their inhabitants & how they deal with people.
2. The vessels & utensils of solid gold that the Filipinos worked for in mines. The silk dresses, the
daggers with long gold hilts, scabbards of carved wood, gold sets of teeth, cereals, rice, millet,
oranges, lemons, panicum which the Filipinos also worked for.
3. The islands-maintained relations with neighboring countries & even with distant ones.
4. In 1539, The warriors of Luzon joined the contests of Sumatra & conquered the terrible Alzadin,
Sulatan of Atchin.
5. Hundreds of rowers are also found in the sea. Junks, paraus, barangays, vintas, & vessels can also be
found floating in the sea wherein different kinds of commerce, industry, agriculture can be seen.
6. Pigafetta also mentioned wealth abounded in the islands. The abundance of foodstuffs & inhabitants,
that the survivors of Magellan were well provided with their needs & still captured a vessel with
bronze lombards.
7. They also ransom, demanding 400 measures of rice, 20 pigs, 20 goats, and 450 chickens, coconuts,
bananas, sugar - cane jars filled with palm – wine. This was the first act of piracy recorded in the
Philippine History.
8. Even before the arrival of the Spaniards in the Philippines there were natives of Luzon who
understood Castilian.
9. Various traders of Luzon with their boats were heavily loaded with iron, wax clothes, porcelain, etc.

9
Why did Rizal write this essay?
The Indolence of the Filipinos is a study of the causes why the people did not, as was said, work hard
during the Spanish regime. Rizal pointed out that long before the coming of the Spaniards, the Filipinos were
industrious and hardworking. He wrote this essay to defend the Filipinos from the charge that they were
born indolent.

Conclusion
The Continued struggle between reason and duty, between native and new ideas and civil wars,
added by the severity of climate (paralyzed all the energies of the Filipinos), become the origin of the indolent
state.

CLASS ASSESSMENT: Short Quiz

Direction: Enumerate and identify the answer to each item. Write your answer to a ¼ sheet of paper.

REFERENCE:
● Rizal, Jose. 1889. Los Agricultores Filiinos. In La Solidaridad, Vol. 1
● Rizal, Jose. 1890. Los Agricultores Filiinos. In La Solidaridad, Vol. 2

LESSON 2: THE FILIPINO FARMERS AND ROMANCING TROPICALITY

INTRODUCTION
The first article that Dr. Jose Rizal wrote was published on March 25, 1889, in La Solidaridad. Showed
the poor living conditions of Filipino farmers in the Philippines, resulting in the nation’s backwardness.
Written in his essay “Los Agricultores Filipinos” “We believe that nothing serves the nation better than telling
the truth. Therefore, we are telling the Mother Country the truth so that reforms may be adopted.” – Jose
Rizal. He, wrote “Filipino Farmers” to reveal the sufferings of Filipino farmers not only from natural calamities
but also their sufferings from bandits, tyrants, and Spaniards ruling.
The Philippines is an archipelagic country located in Southeast Asia. It is considered a tropical country
because it’s near the equator and it experiences wet and dry seasons only, unlike the other countries have 4
seasons due to its location. The Philippines is an area of intense seismic activity because it is located along the
border of two tectonic plates on the ‘Pacific Ring of Fire’, which means it is also prone to earthquakes and
volcanic eruptions.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
1. Describe the context of Filipino History, Culture, and trends.
2. Present the structures in Philippine history by Rizal in his article.
3. Compare the past and valuable perspectives on the problems of our modern society today.

LESSON PROPER

The Filipino Farmers

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 According to Rizal, despite a good recommendation, peace, and order in the province, despite the
exemplary conduct of Filipino citizens, and most importantly, despite the dangers faced by Filipino farmers,
the government still denies the Filipinos’ use of firearms, renewal of license, and the use of any weapon they
purchased.
Capt. Francisco de San Juan, a landlord who owns a large size of land in Laguna far from the town and
planted with sugarcane, abaca, and coffee was denied his license to own a weapon, and his firearms were
taken away from him. Because of that, he is forced to abandon his land because he cannot go to his field
unarmed because of the bandits might attack him.

Sufferings of the Filipino farmers during Spanish colonial government:

Aside from the farmers’ struggles from plagues, and natural calamities, Filipino farmers also suffered
from the misrule and of Spaniards and violence from bandits.
a. Civil Guards Injustices and slavery to the Filipino farmers
- Civil guards detains Filipino farmers if they didn’t bring their personal cedulas, for not saluting
properly to them, or they are under suspicion or perhaps, for no reason at all.
b. Act of violence from bandits; farmers’ terrible enemy
- For those who have their farms far from the towns, it is the robber-bandits that is the terrible
enemy of the farmers. And the better way of combating this evil is to arm one’s self and face
danger everyday.

Because of this situations Filipino farmers have, Jose Rizal through his essay, tries to send message to
the Ministry of Colonies to overlook with this matter for it to stop the continuous abuse against Filipino
farmers and to have reforms in Spanish colonial government.

Struggles of the farmers:

It was written by Dr. Jose Rizal and addressed to the Minister of Colonies and Spanish authorities.
✧ The use of power.

✧ Unfair treatment of the Spanish authorities.

✧ Propose a reform that will favor the rights and welfare of Filipino farmers.

✧ Correct lest malicious comments

✧ The government is helpless

✧ They make friends with the bandits by handing over the disarmed inhabitants.

The abuses inclined which resulted in losses for the country and the decline of Spanish prestige. Rizal
raised that the government's actions merely demonstrate that it is only strict with cooperative citizens while
being tolerant of criminals that commit crimes in the country. Rizal proposes that involving the farmers
directly in the multiple projects and activities that they are carrying out, is quite beneficial. The farmers may
now speak up about their concerns and problems. Additionally, permits the use of guns by farmers.

Romancing Tropicality
On June 1, 1889, a correspondent of La Solidaridad under the alias A. Murgas described the
Philippines as overrun by a mix of natural and man-made disasters. No single cause is identified, and there is
no suggestion that one calamity is related to another. The compounded disaster is part of a series of chronic
misfortunes that beset the homeland.

11
 José Rizal, Marcelo del Pilar, Graciano López Jaena, and Antonio Luna were among the most prominent
youth from the Spanish Philippines in Europe at that time. Embedded in some of their writings were views on
climatological conditions in the Philippines which have hardly been considered in Philippine historiography.
lIlustrados López Jaena, and Antonio Luna were among the most influential in depicting the climate of the
Philippines from a European perspective in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
According to David Arnold, Tropicality – is both physical and mental space, a geographical imaginary,
but there is hardly any scholarship on native views, particularly in the 19th century. People living in tropical
climates would not have had a comparable frame to express their opinions on the climate unless they visited
various climatic regions in the world.
Comparatively visible in Pedro Serrano Laktaw’s writings on La Solidaridad and Rizal’s (seen through
an inverted telescope); ‘the spectre of comparisons.’ Pedro Serrano Laktaw also known as D. A. Murgas,
describes the Philippines as overrun by a distressing mix of disasters such as:
🠶 The cholera epidemic

🠶 Horrific fires

🠶 Having earthquakes

🠶 Suffocating heat

🠶 commercial paralysis

BENEDICT ANDERSON- characterized the comparative approach as involving a phantom, the Specter of
comparisons, his rendition of Rizal’s El demonio de Las comparaciones (Devil of Comparisons).
In Rizal’s Noli me Tangere, Crisostomo Ibarra rides a carriage through Manila and notices that the
streets are still unpaved and the Escolta “seemed less lovely”. Ibarra succumbed to the demonio that incited
envy and despair at the homeland’s lack of progress. Was Rizal anticipating that he would no longer see
Manila in the same way he did before his travel overseas?

El demonio de Las comparaciones (Devil of Comparisons) - Originates from Jose Rizal's Noli me tangere.
✧ It tackles the experiences of Crisostomo Ibarra when he returned to Manila from overseas.

✧ As Ibarra strolls, he sights the botanical garden of Manila which the devil of comparison transported
Ibarra to the botanical garden in Europe.
✧ Ibarra could no longer look at the sights of Manila without comparing them to Europe.

✧ The anticolonial sentiment of the Ilustrados influenced how they perceived Spain's climate and
landscape, causing them to feel distant from the metropole. This perspective also influenced how
they viewed their homeland physically, which was evident in a clear tendency to romanticize its
tropical features.
✧ Although the tropical environment could be disastrous, Rizal and his comrades in the Philippines
believed that Spanish colonial rule was a much worse catastrophe than the tropical climate.

Romancing Nature in Rizal’s Brindis

Rizal delivered a much-applauded speech, later known simply as Brindis. It created a stir in Manila
for its bold assertion of equality between Filipinos and Spaniards and its reference to a day that Spanish Flag
will cease to wave over the Philippines.
Rizal (2011; cf. Rizal 2009) provides a broad context for interpreting the triumphs of Luna and Hidalgo
while displaying naïve optimism and a historicist bent. He considers their achievements as part of the
inevitability of progress, resulting from contact with “Occidental peoples,” an encounter that “awakens” the
natives like an “electric shock” after centuries of slumber. Seen linearly, this historic moment shows that “the
patriarchal era in the Philippines is passing.” This awakening, in Rizal’s view, confirms the “eternal laws of
constant evolution, of transformations, of periodicity, of progress.”
Rizal (ibid.) suggests that History has its own “sun” and in the past it “shone on other continents”
leaving the Orient and “that race” (aquella raza) “in lethargy” (aletargada). This polemic is now possible
because the “sun” of History has reached the homeland. What is more, with Luna and Hidalgo, “the
illustrious deeds of her sons are no longer wasted within the home” but rather shared with the world given
that “the oriental chrysalis is leaving the cocoon; the dawn of a long day for those regions is heralded in
brilliant shades and rose-colored dawns”.

12
 Amid this portrait of inexorable movement now that the Sun of Progress has beamed on the Orient,
Luna and Hidalgo become embodiments of “the glory of genius and the splendor of the homeland” (la gloria
del genio, el esplendor de la patria) because, as Rizal expostulates, they have imbibed “the poetry of nature,
nature magnificent and terrible in its cataclysms, in its evolutions, in its dynamism. Nature sweet, tranquil,
and solemn (melancólica) in its constant, quiescent display. Nature imprints its stamp on whatever it creates
and produces. Its sons carry it wherever they go.”
In the brindis, Rizal enthusiastically praises nature in the tropics as concomitantly cataclysmic and
tranquil, magnificent and terrible. In Rizal's view, this complex nature provides "the spring in mechanism"
that positively animates and propels its people in whatever they do wherever they find themselves,
producing in the case of Luna and Hidalgo creative genius.
According to Rizal, "genius has no country; genius sprouts everywhere; genius is like light and air, the
heritage of everyone— cosmopolitan like space, like life, and like God.” But even as Rizal claims that genius is
“cosmopolitan” and seemingly unmoored from nature, genius is also the very specific effusion of tropical
nature, a nature that to begin with is already embedded in a “race” with a capacity for genius.
Rizal's hermeneutics transforms Luna and Hidalgo's paintings, with their historical and mythological
themes from ancient Europe, into a kind of canvas for "painting" in the minds of his audience the
magnificence and awesomeness of tropical nature in his far-off homeland by elaborating on "the poetry of
nature" that bursts forth in their canvases.
In Luna's Spoliarium, Rizal did not speak of muted voices but of noise and violence that can be seen
from the canvas with as much vigor and realism as one hears the deafening noise of thunder amid the
crashing sound of waterfalls or the awesome, terrifying shaking of an earthquake.
As Rizal puts it, “The same nature that engenders such phenomena also intervenes (intervene) in
those brushstrokes.” The shadows and terror in Luna’s painting resonate with “the dark tempests of the
tropics, the lightning and the obstreperous explosions of its volcanoes.”
In contrast, Hidalgo's Las Vigenes Cristianas as evoking “the purest sentiment, ideal expression of
contemplation, beauty, and frailty, the victims of brute force.” Hidalgo’s painting was depicted by Rizal as “all
light, colors, harmony, sentiment, transparency, like Filipinas, is in her moonlit nights, in her quiet days, with
her horizons that invite meditation.”

Highly acclaimed paintings: Luna’s El Spolarium

Rizal Contextualization on Luna’s Spolarium: - Speaks not of muted voices but of noise and violence arising
from the canvass… -also, “the shadows and terror…resonate the ‘dark tempests of the tropics, the
lightnings, and the disruptive explosions of the volcanoes.”

13
 Hidalgo’s Las Virgenes Cristianas Expuestas al Populacho

Rizal Contextualization on Las Virgenes Cristianas Expuestas al Populacho:

Speaks as evoking “the purest sentiment, ideal expression of contemplation, beauty and frailty, the
victim of brute force.” He as well depicted “all light, colors, harmony, sentiment, transparency, like Filipinas
in her moonlit nights.”

But on the contrary, despite the contextualization on the differences, Rizal advocates that both men’s
palette reflect “the magnificent rays of the tropical sun.” That in Spain, they missed the climate and tropical
environment they had known.

The Visceral Strangeness of Spain

In Rizal and others who romanticized the tropics, also registered an analogous experience of Spain
and its landscape as strange, disappointing, and alienating. The encounter of body and spirit with geographic
otherness resulted in an identity based on being of the Tropics, which was inseparable from the Illustrados’
political estrangement even with the physicality of the metropole. They romanticized the tropics - its climate
and the disasters it spawned. In Spain, they missed the climate and tropical environment they had known
since their tender years. The Ilustrados registered an analogous visceral experience of Spain and its
landscape as strange, disappointing, and alienating.
⮚ Antonio Luna arrived in Spain in 1886, he felt appalled at the landscape of the Iberian Peninsula.
Luna recalled his growing apprehension as he looked out of the train that he was riding, presumably
for the first time, from Barcelona to Madrid, beholding the sight he deemed shocking. It reminded
him of Igorot — one who was beneath his own sense of being, but who had been brought to the
Peninsula for the 1887 Barcelona exposition — exclaimed: " Here there is much hunger because there
is nothing but rocks."
⮚ Luna was disappointed to see the much-anticipated Puerta del Sol. To express this sentiment, he
imagined the high standards of a native, who would be "accustomed to breathing the pure air of our
forests and our jungles, where neither the rays of the sun nor the rain penetrates, or to looking at the
tranquil sea that fades in the blue of the horizon."
⮚ When winter came, it posed a challenge to the Ilustrado's spirit. Antonio Luna could only exclaim of
his experience in Madrid as winter is a miserable season, and the dreariness on Christmas Eve and
such frigidity. When he stepped out into the street, he saw a beggar that is almost naked and
barefoot with a child in her arms inadequately, clothed in filthy rags.
⮚ Rizal didn't write much about how he felt during the winter, but on January 26, 1887, he wrote a
letter to Blumentritt that "this climate is not healthy for me." As he struggled to get his first novel
published, his health deteriorated, and he feared he had contracted tuberculosis.
⮚ Del Pilar (1955, 32), who departed Manila on October 28th, wrote on February 19, 1889, to his
confidant and brother-in-law Deodato Arellano, stating that his "soul" was languishing away in
Barcelona during the winter: "Physically I am in good health. . . However, since I am separated from
you and the light of my house does not shine upon me, I am unable to claim the same for the
condition of my soul." He lamented nature's manifestation on the Iberian Peninsula, and described it
thus: "There, that blue sky studded with stars, the sparkle of the moon in this season, the scorching
rays of the tropical sun, the lushness of its fields, the overflowing fragrance of the flowers." He
depicted his homeland’s tropical nature in grandiose, nostalgic terms. The warmth of the climate was
matched by the “sincerity and warmth of our oriental customs”.

OCCLUDING CALAMITIES
The tendency to pass over the human suffering brought about by calamities that resulted from
natural hazards back home was one of the contradictions of the illustrados’ romanticization of the tropical
climate. The Spanish colonial state, however, did introduce measures to anticipate as well as respond to
calamities, including changes in the architecture of churches and other structures to withstand earthquakes,
the establishment of the Manila Observatory in 1865, and an “impetus for public works” in the 1860s in
response to earthquakes and typhoons. Although Rizal and Antonio Luna had a medical science-related
education, the iIlustrados’ interest in technical matters would appear to be at a level that did not take in what
is now referred to as disaster risk reduction.

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 ✔ The colonial government began to send out typhoon warnings with the initiation of a telegraph
service in 1872, enabling some local governments as well as communities to take precautionary
measures and thereby mitigate disaster risks.
✔ The iIlustrados would have lived through numerous typhoons before their sojourn to Europe. But
because they came from the wealthy class of natives and lived in large, sturdy houses unlike the
poor who called friable huts their homes, these youth might not have experienced directly the
severest horrors of typhoons. Any knowledge of the destructiveness of typhoons could have been
occluded by their intense longing for the tropical climate and estrangement from Spain’s climate.
✔ The illustrados discussed here lived through droughts in the Philippines before they left for
Europe. Nevertheless, the fall in food production and eventual spread of hunger precipitated by
droughts had catastrophic outcomes for societies and global power asymmetries.
✔ The earthquake of 1863, which decimated scores of people,12 also killed Fr. Pedro Peláez inside
the Manila Cathedral. Because Peláez led the secularization movement, which asserted the right
of native secular priests to administer parishes based on canon law, his death had far-reaching
political implications (Blanco 2010). Fr. José Burgos took up the issue of secularization,
transforming it into a campaign against Spanish racist assertions about native inferiority
(Schumacher 1999). The 1863 tremor and Burgos’s leadership and eventual execution in 1872,
which had a direct personal connection to Rizal (Schumacher 2006), were submerged in his broad
reference to “the awesome, terrifying shaking of an earthquake” in his 1884 toast to Luna and
Hidalgo.
✔ When presenting its stated aims in its very first issue, La Solidaridad lamented this neglect by
declaring that Spain “sleeps while all its agricultural, industrial, and commercial interests, except
for those of monastic character, are all being exploited over there by foreign commerce”.
✔ To the progress of the Philippines. This offer of primary commodities suggested that López Jaena
was a believer in free trade, which Rizal similarly favored in his essay “Sobre la indolencia de los
Filipinos” Rizal (1996c, 392) linked commerce to political liberty, advancing his political-economic
perspective while citing as evidence France, England, the United States as well as Hong Kong.

Homogenized Tropics, Cosmopolitan Climate

While the Philippines was their main referent, the iIlustrados generally framed their views of the
climate in terms of the tropics. In the Caribbean “the complex of ideas associated with the tropics was first
assembled” and then “exported, particularly through medical and botanical texts, to other intra-tropical
regions, such as India and Southeast Asia,” despite sharply different environmental and social conditions
(Arnold 2000,9).
David Arnold (ibid.) also points out, “while naturalists and geographers commonly distinguished
between hot, wet lowlands, dry savannas, and cold alpine areas, the first of these were taken to typify the
tropics as a whole.” In the early part of the nineteenth century, for instance, the German naturalist
Alexander von Humboldt “helped invent the tropics as a field for systematic scientific inquiry and a realm of
aesthetic appreciation” (Arnold 2000, 8).
However, a more pervasive and unfavorable perception of the tropics was present in Europe.
"Europe's connection with the tropics contained, practically from the first, a dualism that made the tropics
appear as much pestilential as paradisiacal," writes Arnold (ibid.). Strongly pejorative depictions of the tropics
focused on barbarism, bloodshed, and destruction.
The iIlustrados would have had firsthand knowledge of the fact that the tropical sun shined not only
on the islands of the Philippines but also on other tropical regions of the world when they traveled by sea to
Europe.

The Politics of Romancing the Landscape

On February 25, 1889 Graciano López Jaena (1996) delivered a landmark speech at the Ateneo
Barcelonés on the theme “Filipinas en la Exposición Universal de Barcelona” (The Philippines in the Universal
Exposition of Barcelona). The speech was interrupted several times by applause and assent from the
audience, who at the end burst into overwhelming praise and thunderous applause.
In arguing that the Philippines was not well represented in the 1887 Barcelona exposition, López
Jaena sought to educate Spaniards about the Philippines. At the outset he admitted his “patriotic interest”
and desire to present the Philippines to Spaniards so they could make an impartial judgment about the
islands, “the pride of Spain, coveted by foreign nations”. He wanted to call the Spaniards’ attention to their

15
country’s Asian colony, appreciate its natural richness and economic possibilities, and put in check the friar
dominance that had stymied its progress.
López Jaena began his speech by describing “the nature of that Spanish land of the Orient.” After
specifying the coordinates of the territory on the Mercator globe, “straddling close to the equatorial line,” he
located the islands squarely within the Torrid Zone, one of five zones in a climatological classification devised
by Strabo to refer to “a region so burnt up with heat as to be uninhabitable”. He listed in detail “the wonders
of nature” that produced an abundance that could put even the New World to shame: “The fertility of the
soil is such that her fauna and her flora constitute a real prodigality that some say is better than that of the
American world, which is replete with wonders and enchantments.”
Therefore, its climatic conditions can be presented as the ideal type that human physiologists pursue
in their scientific investigations.” One need not fear for one’s health in this “paradise of Oceania” where the
European “prescriptions” about hygiene “are certainly unknown and completely ignored” because of the
inherent healthfulness of the climate, thus contradicting European notions of the tropics as disease-ridden.
Not only are the islands habitable, they enjoy perfect climate.
Disasters from natural hazards do not tarnish the idealized climate for their destructiveness is
superficial, their “anarchy” being only an outward appearance. López Jaena asserts that geological events are
part of nature’s organic cycle, which revitalizes the islands and fertilizes the soil. Floods and tempests are
frequent in the islands, like earthquakes and other geological phenomena, their terrible destructiveness being
apparent. Yet, these revolutions of nature which always happen in those latitudes and under the guise of
anarchy due to their strength and intensity, far from harming the islands, revitalize them, for in their fury they
bring to the valleys the fertilizing mud abounding in detritus minerals and organic matter formed in the
mountains over the course of centuries.
López Jaena summarizes the physical description of the Philippine islands in these words “I venture to
say that the extensive aggrupation of those scattered Spanish islands in Oceania is like a bouquet of flowers
that with a noble hand Provident Nature has pinned on the breast close to the heart of Mother Spain.” The
history of imperial conquest is brushed aside by the explicit suggestion of a “natural” connection between the
Philippines and Spain.
But López Jaena laments. “It seems surprising, gentlemen, that those beautiful islands, whose
exuberance is amazing, whose natural resources should suffice to constitute the happiness and the splendors
of any nation, state, or kingdom it seems incredible that they have long been forgotten by Spain.” Evidently
López Jaena’s romanticizing of the tropical climate and landscape was intended to achieve a specific
political objective.

Tropical, Natural Resources, and the World Market

In raising the specter of “foreign” intentions over the Philippines and cajoling Spaniards to act akin to
playing on the fear of foreigners that Spaniards in the Philippines nurtured since the colony’s formal opening
to world trade at the start of the nineteenth century López Jaena said that “Foreign nations know every inch
of the Philippines, even its densest forests, while Spain, despite owning it, totally ignores it.”
In response to this idling indolent Mother Country, López Jaena goaded “Spain, especially commercial
and industrial Cataluña, to be interested in knowing the Philippines.” Paradoxically, the Barcelona exposition
of 1887 was conceived by Overseas Minister Victor Balaguer precisely to display Spain’s new imperialism.
After exhorting the Catalans to export the “immense assortment” of their merchandise to the Philippines,
López Jaena declared, “The Philippines offers you in return its abaca, its cotton to supply your factories,
sibucao, and other tinctorial woods for dyeing your textiles, coffee, cocoa,
tobacco, spices, for the enjoyment of life.” This offer of primary commodities suggested that López Jaena was
a believer in free trade, which Rizal similarly favored.
López Jaena’s offer of primary commodities was rooted in a specific vision of tropicality that, as David
Arnold has elucidated, signified a platitudinous abundance, a discourse of primitive fertility awaiting the
civilizing and modernizing intervention of the West, seemingly because nothing could be expected from the
tropical inhabitants left to themselves. Indeed, this representation of nature’s abundance in the tropics was
central to the drive of imperial powers such as Britain, France, and the Netherlands to control and exploit
their colonies, including those in Southeast Asia, in the nineteenth century.

Reversing Tropical Degeneracy

By stressing the creative and healthful benefits of the tropics, the iIlustrados sought to reverse a
deep-seated European conception of the Torrid Zone as causing inherent degeneracy. As more areas of the
globe were explored after the fifteenth century, the view of the Torrid Zone as uninhabitable was revised. But
the original belief enjoyed a tenacity among Spaniards.

16
 The habitability of the islands caused wonderment in the seventeenth century. Writing in 1609
Antonio de Morga commented: “The ancients had asserted that most of these islands were deserted and
uninhabitable, but experience has already demonstrated that it is fallacious, as one finds in them good
temperature, many people, means of sustenance and other things suitable for human life” Articulating a
sense of surprise was the Jesuit Fr. Ignacio Francisco Alcina, who wrote extensively on the climate in the
Visayas. Alcina began by confronting the ancient belief, "despite they said latitude and the super proximity of
the equator or the torrid zone, it may be inferred that all these islands would share it's warmness.
Alcina explained further: “The heat is not such as to impede habitation. Rather, in some places is very
mild and like a perpetual springtime, because of the great abundance of rain. tempers the heat to a great
extent. Also helpful is the variety of winds that refresh and usually blow through them”. Moreover, “the moral
complexion of the tropical imagination persistently reasserted itself, frequently in the trope of tropical
degeneration.”
By the early nineteenth century, Spanish friars had become ardent exponents of españolismo,
especially after the loss of Spanish America in 1821 had left them deeply threatened by the possibility of
losing the Philippines also, in addition to problems that arose from the undermining of the Catholic Church
and the general political turmoil in the Peninsula. “Among Spanish conservatives and reactionaries, which
included almost the entire clergy, tradicionalismo had identified Catholicism and Spanish patriotism almost
inextricably, and looked with nostalgic pride to Spain’s golden century when she brought the Catholic faith to
the New World”.
Against this denigration of the native, the iIlustrados advanced a contrary view of the tropics as
generative of genius, creativity, vitality, and wellness. Given the Spanish friars’ discursive strategy, the
Ilustrados’ romancing of the climate, most publicly in Rizal’s 1884 Brindis and López Jaena’s 1889 speech at
the Ateneo Barcelonés, was a riposte to hegemonic Spanish racial-cum-geographic prejudice.
Other Spaniards in the Philippines also extolled its climate, but from the vantage point of stimulating
economic development and attracting entrepreneurial migrants from the Peninsula—akin to López Jaena’s
concern for economic progress expressed in his 1889 speech at the Ateneo Barcelonés.

Homecoming: Rizal in Calamba, 1887

Unlike Del Pilar and López Jaena, who lived in Spain until they died, López Jaena on January 20, 1896,
Del Pilar on July 4, 1896, both from tuberculosis with no chance of returning to the homeland, Rizal traveled
back to the Philippines in 1887, after the publication of Noli me Tangere. He landed in Manila in the evening
of August 5, 1887 on board a vessel he had boarded in Saigon. He did not stay long in Manila but proceeded
to his family home in Calamba, where his father, concerned for his safety, restricted his movements.
During his slightly over half a year in the Philippines, Rizal after having lived in Europe for more than
five years and despite the lengthy nautical travel had a different experience of tropical heat. On September 5,
1887, a month after his arrival, he wrote Blumentritt from Calamba complaining, “es ist mir zu heiss, ich habe
schon zarpullidos” (it’s too hot for me. I already have rashes).
Eventually, he must have adjusted to the climate, although by the time he left in February, he felt
slightly unwell. Nonetheless, he admitted that in the early mornings, particularly at dawn, he would go for a
walk to a hill, together with the guard assigned to watch him, to "enjoy the freshness of the morning" (Rizal
1938, 232-33), suggesting that the remainder of the day would be dominated by the tropical heat. Dawn was
a brief slice of the tropical day that provided him the sensation of a temperate climate. As such, its
enjoyment was akin to a repeated peering through the inverted telescope.
Back in Europe, Rizal would reference the tropical climate, especially the heat, but devoid of
romance. The adulation of tropical nature so prominent in the Brindis would disappear, his earlier argument
about the relationship between the tropics and creativity seemingly forgotten. In its place Rizal's treatment of
nature would veer closer to the Spanish thinking that he and other Ilustrados struggled against, although he
would twist it to reposit accountability on the colonial power.

Indolence and the Tropical Heat: Sancianco and Del Pilar

❖ In 1889, in the first part of his essay "Filipinas dentro de cien años" (The Philippines a Century Hence),
which was serialized in La Solidaridad beginning in the 30 September 1889 issue, Rizal alluded to the
influence of climate on people and their customs. As though concurring with Herrero, Rizal stated
that the ancient Filipinos used to possess traditions and laws, which were "the inspirations of their
race by the climate and their manner of feeling. “
❖ Rizal attributed this structure of feeling to the climate, which he said had the same impact on people
as on animals: "He has all the meekness and all the tenacity and ferocity of his carabao. Climate
influences bipeds in the same way that it does quadrupeds".

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 ❖ In the essay's third installment, Rizal made reference to "impenetrable forests," a "burning sun," as
well as "torrential rains". The resplendence of the sun in the Brindis had given way to its scorching
heat.
❖ In the concluding installment, Rizal explicitly declared that the climate of the Philippines was "to a
certain extent disastrous".
❖ In "Sobre la indolence de los filipinos" Rizal admitted at the outset, "We must confess that indolence
actually and positively exists there." This tack contradicted the denial of the existence of indolence
made by Gregorio Sancianco, who refuted "such vexatious" allegations in his book El Progreso de
Filipinas.
❖ Sancianco pointed out that, where population numbers sufficed, the economic production in selected
provinces and the country's overall export of primary commodities were solid proof that natives had
been hard at work and therefore indolence did not exist.
❖ He asserted that seafarers from the Philippines proved the native's industry, their work serving as "an
excellent protest against the idleness and indolence attributed to the Filipino." "In the native Filipino
one finds a treasure of virtues and great love for work.
❖ A contrary view might protest that seafarers from the Philippines had excelled because they had been
taken out of the tropics. But López Jaena was arguing against any inherent sloth in the native, as
Spaniards had averred. Rizal's approach was different.

Indolence and the Tropical Heat: Rizal

⮚ In "Sobre la indolencia de los filipinos" Rizal opens his essay by acknowledging Sancianco's argument
and differing from it by proposing that, because "serious and disinterested persons" have adduced
evidence contrary to Sancianco's, it is "appropriate to study this question at its root, without scorn or
sensitivities, without preconceptions, without pessimism.
⮚ In a sophisticated line of argumentation, Rizal admits the existence of indolence "we believe that
indolence does exist over there"--but asserts that ultimately the colonizers are to blame for this state
of affairs. By themselves Filipinos "can measure up to the most active people of the world," but
Spanish rule has not drawn out the best from them.
⮚ Rizal digresses and invites the reader to "study... in its exact value the predisposition due to nature".
Nature predisposes people to a certain pattern of behavior, with hot and cold climates having
markedly divergent effects on people: "The warm climate demands from the individual stillness and
rest, just as the cold stimulates one to work and action". Indolence in the tropics is thus inevitable, a
natural consequence of the climate.
⮚ Suggesting that climate matters more than "race," Rizal argues that even Europeans live like the
natives when they are in the tropics. He points out that Germans and English, not just Spaniards, live
in the tropics in abundance, leisure, and rest, surrounded by a retinue of hard-working servants. The
tropical climate transforms Europeans into indolent people, whereas they are not so in Europe.
⮚ Rizal claims, "A man can live in any climate if only he will adapt himself to its exigencies and
conditions." Having lived in parts of Western Europe that can be a lot colder than Spain, he asserts,
"We, inhabitants of hot countries, live well in northern Europe whenever we adopt the precautions
that the people there do". Similarly, "Europeans can also adapt to the torrid zone if only they will rid
themselves of their fixations (preoccupations)".
⮚ Rizal's assertion that a hot climate means rest and inactivity while a cold climate propels work and
action is followed by a pseudoscientific assertion about the relationship between blood and climate.
⮚ Negating the dread of winter expressed by Antonio Luna and Del Pilar and glossing over his own
miserable experience, Rizal provides another perspective. He suggests that in the temperate zone a
seasonal replenishment and reinvigoration of human blood occurs because of the changing seasons:
in the cold of winter the blood is "fortified" so that by springtime people have "fresh blood". In
contrast, in tropical countries where there is no winter "the blood is thinned and impoverished by
continuous and excessive heat".

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 ⮚ Rizal argues, therefore, that in the tropics "indolence is very natural, and we have to admit and bless
it because we cannot alter natural laws, and because without it the race would have disappeared."
⮚ Nevertheless, while conceding that the tropical heat impoverishes the blood and leads to the native's
life-saving aversion to labor, Rizal pins the blame on Spanish colonial policy and practices, especially
the deficient education system dominated by friars that brutalizes and dehumanizes the natives, robs
them of any incentive to work and accumulates wealth, stifles their adventurous spirit, and saps them
of national sentiment.
⮚ Ultimately Rizal attributes indolence to colonial rule, which does not mitigate but rather fosters and
magnifies the "lamentable predisposition" toward indolence caused by the climate. In effect, he does
not disagree with the Spanish view on the effects of tropical climate on people but admits it and
turns it on its head. Moral degeneracy in the form of sloth is blamed not on climate but on colonial
rule.

Colonial Rule as Worse Calamity

In contrast to the romanticizing of the tropical climate and the disasters spawned by natural hazards
evident in the earlier writings of Rizal and in the texts of ilustrados in Europe, the letters they received from
the Philippines reported calamities matter-of-factly or in a distressed tone, as we have seen in the letter of
Serrano Laktaw at the start of this article.
For these Philippine- based correspondents there was no inverted telescope. However, while they
recognized the extreme effects of some climatological conditions, they also acknowledged calamities
precipitated by human foibles.
An unsigned article on the administration of Philippine towns that appeared in the 15 August 1889
issue of La Solidaridad lamented that "Torrential rains and floods are ordinary phenomena in the Philippines,
which annually destroy roads and bridges." Because the municipality, much less the barangay, had no
"corporate character" and "all municipal finances were centralized at the provincial capital" under the control
of the provincial governor, the town mayor (gobernadorcillo) had no funds to undertake repairs.
The gobernadorcillo has no compensation, receiving scarcely twenty pesos a year, but has great
duties and responsibilities and, just like the cabeza, is frequently jailed for someone else's faults. The whole
system, was "a real calamity for the country, infinitely more burdensome than anything else.
In a similar vein, in the 15 March 1889 issue of La Solidaridad an unsigned article, "Los agricultores
Filipinos," commonly attributed to Rizal, stated that "Laguna is one of the more agricultural provinces and
more prone to natural and human calamities" ([Rizal] 1996, 46). The article argued, "The Filipino agriculturist
has to struggle not only against plagues and public calamities but also against petty tyrannies and bandits.
Against the former, yes, he is allowed some defense; against the latter, not always “.
Toward the end of his 1890 essay on indolence Rizal mentioned "submerged plains," but his reference
to "many calamities" was aimed at the depredations caused by Spanish policies that decimated the native
population.
In part of Rizal’s essay, he pointed to calamities brought about by drought, rinderpest, and locust
infestation, but decried the Spanish friars' solution of resorting to nothing more than prayers, exorcisms, and
processions. "If the climate and nature are not enough in themselves to confound him and deprive him of all
vitality “, then misplaced religiosity and the overall colonial dispensation conspired to promote native
indolence. Ultimately, Rizal deemed colonial misgovernment the "real calamity" exceeding all others.

CONCLUSIONS
1. Despite contradictions in their appropriations of tropicality, it became the basis for claiming cosmopolitan
equality with the colonial master, while it also helped develop a collective identity, of being of the tropics,
not as degenerate but as a civilizable people of producing genius.
2. Rizal’s reinvented discursive strategy enabled him to look beyond the climate and pin the blame on the
colonial rule for native indolence, even if this trait was seen as already predisposed by climate.

CLASS ASSESSMENT: Group Presentations

1. Each group will be given materials to work on with.
2. Each group will draw an illustration regarding the article in La Solidaridad “LOS AGRICULTORES FILIPINOS.”
Within 10 minutes.
3. Show the comparison of the Filipino farmers before (18th c.) and the Filipino Farmers today (20th onwards).
4. After 10 minutes you are going to present your work in front of the class.
5. Presentation will be limited to 5 minutes only.

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6. Presentations must have the following descriptions:
a) Implications of the farmers before to the present ones.
b) Cite scenarios of the Filipino farmers during the 18th
c) Identify at least 3 reforms?
d) The group who will excel with the presentation shall be declared winner!

REFERENCE:

o Aguilar, Filomeno. 2016. Romancing Tropicality: Ilustrado Views of the Climate in the 19th Century.
o Rizal, Jose. 1890. Los Agricultores Filiinos. In La Solidaridad, Vol. 2

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