Boco, Mary Rose Criscelle D.
2018019711
Philippine History
Section 5
RIZAL AND THE UNDERSIDE OF THE PHILIPPINE HISTORY
INTRODUCTION
In the introduction part of the reading, it discussed about how well the familiarity of the Filipinos
to the customs and traditions and the patterns of development of the country. It said that we are a
combination of many Asian “great tradition” that transformed us into having an aura of exotic
and impenetrable. Ileto stated that “Filipinos were no longer deemed passive recipients of Spanish
cultural stimuli; their responses varied from acceptance to indifference and rejection.” [1] We
were somehow “fine” or we are disregarding the fact that one of the writer or author, or the creator
of our history have never ever stepped foot here in our country. And his references was only based
on the other countries way of governing, and the written experiences of other foreign people based
on how they have observed from the Philippines.
THE “FALL” IN ILLUSTRADO COUNSCIOUSNESS
The problem with the people be that we are so fascinated to the things of the other foreign countries
have brought inside our territory and we are neglecting our products. And in fact, we are still
fascinated and patronizing them a little more than our (based on the percentage made up in my
head). The fact that the Filipinos back then disregard the names they’ve been called and was
gullible enough to believe that those colonizers do not have any bad intention to our territory. They
used religion as a foundation to persuade people to join them.
“Only with the advent of Rizal and the ilustrados is there supposed to be clear understanding of
the causes of dissatisfaction. Only with the founding of Andres Bonifacio’s Katipunan secret
society is there an organization with clear strategies and goals. When Katipunan is superseded by
Emilio Aguinaldo’s republican government, the Filipino people are seen to be finally released not
only from the colonial mother country but also from a dark past.” [2]
The Philippines had a long and very difficult history. The Philippines can be seen as an aberration
in relation to other Asian countries. The Philippines were originally Asian in culture and race, but
lost this identity through the Spanish, and American colonial experience. But we see that through
the colonial experience a new Filipino Identity developed. The period of long colonial rule also
produced a culture that was neither directly Spanish, American nor directly Filipino. Filipino
society and culture today can be best described as a synthesis of the two cultures that has been
tempered over time. However for some Filipinos this is not enough. Some long for a more solid
notion of identity. And I as well is also quite confuse to how everything really started.
“These traditions [of links with Sumatra] were completely lost, just like the mythology and
genealogies of which the old historians speak, thanks to the zeal of the religious in extirpating
every remembrance of our nationality, of paganism, or of idolatry.” [3]
“search for a total history, in which all the differences of a society might be reduced to a single
form, to the organization of a world-view, to the establishment of a system of values, to a coherent
type of civilization.” [4]
“Ignorance and naiveté are the familiar explanations for what appears to have been the absence
of fixed boundaries in the conceptual world of the early Filipinos.” [5]
We are now kind of lost puppy in finding our real origin. We are neglecting the thought of looking
back to find our history. I have been pondering what would be the best the thing I would have done
for my country? I actually don’t know because at my age and living in this kind of generation, it
is impossible for me to do something big. But then I realized that it isn’t important on how big it
is. And I think that the best thing I’ve done for my country is to be proud that I am a Filipino. We
might not have a concise history of our origin. I will still be proud and loud of my country and
nationality. Maybe just because the colonizers affects the way we think to almost everything. It is
because we were too innocent and trust easily to people who shows and provide us good things.
THE POWER OF KING BERNARDO
In the reading, it discussed about the “alien” stories of the past, which they used to confront the
ilustrados and by using a Tagalog awit version the story of Bernardo Carpio as an example. It
narrates how Bernardo Carpio was raised by his surrogate parents and how he lived during his
childhood with his super powers of enormous strength and limitless energy who grows up unable
to control or focus these powers. He was compared to Andres Bonifacio and Jesus Christ. It said
that there was a story Bernardo and Rizal, as the young stranger to the story, met each other when
the young boy Rizal have gone to the cave of the mountain where Bernardo was imprisoned by
God. Bernardo’s journey affects the real core of the story and was changed into thinking about
power. It claimed that “he is an embodiment of kapangyarihan (lit., power), the spiritual substance
that "animates" the universe and is often concentrated in certain power-full beings and objects. It
also stated that the story of Bernardo being like the Filipinos who fell from an original state of
wholeness, came under the domination of surrogates (e.g., Spain, the friars) and therefore remained
in a state of darkness and immaturity until they recognized their true mother again. Believes that
after all of being left behind and having those bad experiences in life there will still be a new hope
coming to us. We are just the one who is wasting it when it is there with us then regretting when
it was already lost.
THE UNDERSIDE OF HISPANIZATION
Rizal was called “the first Filipino” back then, because of him figuring out the rise of dominance
of the principalía class, descendants of the noble families became the most important thing back
then. Source of this progress is the large class of nationalist that are impossible to detangle that
were involved with the ordering of the Philippine society in the aftermath of the conquest. And the
main task of the Spaniards are the missionaries and soldiers was to concentrate or resettle people
in hearing the distance of the church bells.
Their pattern of Filipino Settlements are the local churches which is the focal points of the
population concentration and the other religiopolitical centers for guidance and sustenance. The
elites was encouraged to not rise their position of stature without them thinking or behaving
thoroughly classified by the church.
THE PASYON INTERFACE
It discussed the difference of pasyon of the higher fortunate people who were able to go to a
gathering than the pasyon of the less fortunate people. How the life of Jesus Christ was when he
was trying to heal, serve, send us the message of his father and his sacrifices for his people, to
rescue them to the peak of his capabilities.
People made a new concept of Rizal based of his actions. Saying that the death of Rizal is a reenactment of the pasyon. Bothering if Rizal intendedly or not imitates the life of Jesus Christ, by
healing people, by helping people who are in need, by fighting for what he thinks is right for the
people and by sacrificing his life to save his people.
THE TEXTUALIZATION OF RIZAL
“The problem of Rizal’s status as national hero follow from the context in which the nineteenthcentury Philippine history has been constructed. Ironically, notions of ievolution and rationality
from the nineteenth century itself are responsible for excluding from this history the ‘repetitious’
and ‘false’ or ‘mythical’ aspects of reality. The pervading discourse of subjectivity hassled to a
preoccupation with Rizal’s intentions, the authentic voice behind his texts.” [6]
People were questioning and debating about the identity of Rizal if he is a nationalist or reformist.
The words and wisdom of Rizal through the book is an attempt to make awareness to the other
Philippine people to want a better life for themselves, children, and country. The message for
equality is evident in the book along with inspiration for reform and movement of nationalism.
THE MEANING OF DEATH
“Dying is not an extinction of self but a passage into a state of pure, brilliant potency. It is a
passage to the depths of the earth, to the center of the world, where potency is supremely
concentrated.” [7]
It stated that “Rizal became the necessary center, the "ancestor" in the sense of being a source of
kapangyarihan for leaders of peasant movements against both foreign and local oppressors.” [8]
Even in his death bed, Rizal had entered the realm of pure potency. His words in his works were
left alive. They also believed that he might soon arise from his grave just like Jesus Christ. People
believe that Rizal is some kind of talisman with a powerful anting-anting. And when he died the
hierarchical system came to be developed, with the king at the apex or center, the talisman of the
state embodying the qualities of prowess and inner control, situated above personal relations,
which are too fragile to be the sole basis of state formation. Claiming that Rizal is definitely a
product of the colonial order who, through modern education, heralded the birth of modern
Southeast Asian nationalism. On the other hand, the signs he scattered about, his gestures, works,
his absences even, and finally, the mode of his death, generated meanings linked to other—largely
hidden—narratives of the Philippine past.
REFERENCES:
Ileto, Reynaldo C., Filipinos in their Revolution (events, discourse, and Historiography), chapter
-2-Rizal-and-the-Underside-of-the-Philippine-history
References of quotations from the reading:
1. 1. John Phelan, The Hispanization of the Philippines (1959). Phelan (p. 151) mentions the
tendency of Filipino historians to unduly emphasize the early revolts when, actually, creative
social adjustment to Spanish rule was the general response of the populace.
2. 12. Says Agoncillo, "The Philippine Republic which [Aguinaldo] shaped and led gave the
Philippines its most glorious and significant epoch" ("Aguinaldo in History" [1959], 14).
Carlos Quirino sees the Katipunan as an initial stage which had to be "outgrown" (The Trial
of Andres Bonifacio [1963], "historical introduction," 28). Aguinaldo's dis-dain of the
allegedly "monarchist" tendencies of the Katipunan reflects the general attitude of republican
leaders (see Mga Gunita ng Himagsikan [1964], 140-43).
3. Annotations to Morga's Sucesos, quoted in Schumacher, "Propa-gandists’ Reconstruction,"
274.
4. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972), 12-13.
5. Ileto, Reynaldo C.
6. Ileto, Reynaldo C.
7. Among the early Filipinos, death is expressed "in the symbol of a long journey, usually over
the waters, or by a descent into the bowels of the earth through a cave under a high
mountain." This and other striking parallels are discussed in Francisco Demetrio, S.J.,
"Death" (1966).
8. Ileto, Reynaldo C.