The End of Veneration

A PASTMASTERS Publication

The End Of Veneration

By

Bob Couttie

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The End Of Veneration 2•

Renato Constanino

Rizal has become an

enduring victim of the

Cold War of the middle of

the 20th century

Introduction It was a time of global ferment. Images of the Vietnam War brought combat into living rooms worldwide. The Cold War pitched America and its allies against the Soviet Union and China, with Asia, including the Philippines, as a significant battlefront. An ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation leveraged skepticism towards traditional authority, further fuelled by the increasing economic power of the youth. Student activism raged from one continent to another, university campuses became war zones as the confused old world and the confident new world collided.

This was the world of Renato Constantino, journalist, former WW2 guerrilla and Philippine government official. A nationalist, he used Marxist historical class-based analysis in writing several books and articles to promote the struggle of the masses although his audience was predominantly middle class and wealthy students. He was an intellectual commando in the Cold War for supremacy of the hearts, minds and resources of the Philippines.

As part of his mission to overthrow the status quo, in 1969, Constantino called upon his countrymen to topple the pre-eminent Philippine National Hero, 19th century activist Jose Rizal, by posthumously identifying him with American imperialism in an article, Veneration Without Understanding.

Ferdinand Marcos was president and just three years later declared Martial Law, a dictatorship which ruled until, desperately ill and losing control to his wife, Imelda

Marcos, and his military righthand man, General Fabian Ver, he was overthrown in the People’s Power Revolution of February 1986 by a loose coalition of the military leadership, the Catholic Church and the people.

The Soviet Union, which most certainly pump-primed a number of radicals, has

fallen at the behest of its own masses. Images of the Hammer and Sickle, Lenin and Che Guevarra have transmogrified from political statements to fashion statements. China, whose own form of Maoist Communism influenced many a university campus in the radical years, has tainted its political purity by courting Western capital, Western markets and Western goods, selling uniform baseball caps to the armies of its ideological rivals and by encouraging capitalism among its own huddled masses earning for their portion of liberty.

Permanent US military bases in the Philippines have closed, partly because of US Defense Department spending limitations, partly because the technology, tactics and strategy of warfare made such forward basing unnecessary, partly because the fall of the Soviet Union led to the closure of its Cam Ranh Bay facility to which Subic Bay Naval Base was a counterweight, and partly because by a one vote majority the Philippine Senate declined to ratify a treaty for the extension of the bases. Filipino


nationalists and the ghost of US President Eisenhower, who consistently urged closure of American bases in the Philippines, doubtless applauded.

The Cold War has gone, to be replaced by the alleged ‘War On Terrorism’ and Islamic fundamentalism, with its deeper roots in the Sunni-Shia Schism, the European Crusades, the British and French betrayal of Arab nationalists in World War 1, American foreign policy post-World War 2 and the Russian involvement in Afghanistan. Anti-Americanism remains, protests continue over US and Allied involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan but they carry little of the romance of struggling masses that made the activism of the 1960s and 1970s so fashionable.

Even though nearly 40 years have passed since Veneration Without Understanding was written, the picture painted by Constantino remains the predominant image of Jose Rizal among many Filipinos and Filipinists. Is that image accurate or has Rizal become an enduring victim of the Cold War of the 20th Century? �%RE�&RXWWLH�

Constantino

remains the

predominant

image of Jose

Rizal


Preface

I lay no claim to originality in what follows, much of it has been said by others,

although rarely in a public forum.

Of the few who have dared to publicly question Constantino’s version of Rizal I

would recommend, as starting points, Ambeth Ocampo’s Rizal Without The Overcoat and

Meaning and History (Both from Anvil Press), and John S. Schumacher’s The Making of

A Nation (Ateneo de Manila Press).

Renato Constantino’s article, Veneration Without Understanding is available on the

Internet at http://rizalslifewritings.tripod.com. Constantino’s self-published The

Philippines A Past Revisited is still widely available in bookstores. A non-Philippine-

based critique of Constantino’s A Past Revisited can be found in Glenn Anthony May’s

controversial A Past Recovered (New Day).

Rizal’s annotated Las Sucesos de Las Islas Filipinas by Antonio De Morga is still

available in English translation as Historical Events in the Philippine Islands at the

National Historical Institute on TM Kalaw, Manila. Information on pre-Hispanic

Philippines, as well as the Code of Kalantiaw and the Maragtas, can be found in William

Henry Scott’s fine Pre-Hispanic Source Materials for the Study of Philippine History

(New Day), Behind the Parchment Curtain (New Day) and Barangay (Ateneo De Manila

University Press).

Rey Ileto’s classic work on history ‘from beneath’, Pasyon and Revolution, is a

valuable, though not unfaulted, exploration of how the Philippine Revolution may have

been viewed by the masses themselves. Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities

(Anvil Press) is a very readable classic study on the creation of nation, nationality and

nationalism.

Those who wish to study the issue further should consult the primary sources cited in

these works. These are not the only sources consulted for the preparation of this article.

Those who wish to have a better grasp of my own biases, prejudices and opinions

should refer to Hang The Dogs: The True Tragic History of the Balangiga Massacre

(New Day), The Philippine-American War entry in Scribner’s Dictionary of American

History, which I contributed, and the Philippine-American War entry in ABS-CLIO’s

War Crimes: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, which I also authored.

Any errors of fact or judgment are entirely my own and I apologise in advance. Any

political incorrectness is mine too, but there’s no need to apologise for that: As Theodoro

Agoncillo remarked, “The study of history is not a popularity contest”.


Constantino has

acquired the status

of a secular

religion

Part 1 – A Conspiracy Of Silence

Renato Constantino' s writings remain among the most influential body of work in

Philippine historiography. This has remained the case even though an increasing

number of professional historians have, quietly, come to the conclusion that those

works have relatively little value for modern historical studies, other than as

historical artifacts themselves, that they have contributed to an undue concentration

on one small part of the country's history at the expense – literally in the case of

such an underfunded area of scholarship – of research along paths less traveled that

may provide a firmer underpinning to national identity and nationhood.

What is especially worrying is the self-censorship by the Philippine scholarly history

community. Constantino's faults are discussed almost behind closed doors, much as

Filipinos would hesitate to discuss Ferdinand Marcos or Spanish era Filipinos speak out

about Spanish rule.

Constantino has acquired the status of a secular religion with his article denouncing

Jose Rizal, Veneration Without Understanding, representing one of its holy scriptures, to

be questioned at risk of treatment of which the medieval Catholic Inquisition would be

proud. It is fair to question whether such an

environment is conducive or inimical to the

development of a nationalist history.

This, it should be said, is not the fault of

Constantino but of followers who cite him and use his

writings as a primary source while censoring

Constantino' s own words regarding his methodology

and purpose. That purpose is made clear in his introduction to The Philippines: A Past

Revisited: Filipinos are not ready for objective data about their own history, that must be

suppressed until they have reached a level of nationalism, only then would they be ready

to read the truth about their own history. Precisely the same argument was used by

American officials to justify the colonization of the archipelago and withholding

Philippine Independence – Filipinos weren't ready for it.

Herein lays a significant difference between the two men. Rizal believed in liberty and

that knowledge was a path to liberty, Constantino saw knowledge as an inhibition of

liberty, and that freedom would be attained by limiting access to knowledge. In Rizal’s

concept of the State, people would be free to know wqhat they wanted to know, in

Constantino’s State they would be free to know only that which the state felt appropriate

for them to know.

I would submit that while myth plays an important role in creating and maintaining

national identity, deliberate falsification does not. A nation's myths reflect those values it

regards as unique to itself and which separate its identity from other nations. Nazi-era

Germany, the Stalinist Soviet Union, Khmer Rouge Cambodia and modern North Korea

are examples of the sort of dysfunctional `nationhood' produced by such falsification.

Be that as it may, it is important to bear in mind that Constantino' s self-admitted

intent was not to reveal historical truth but to create an activist mindset among his

middle-class readership.

Constantino had a purpose that was markedly similar to that of Jose Rizal. This is

hardly surprising. Both lived at a time of enormous economic and political change. Both


lived under regimes in which outright criticism, or support for the overthrow of the status

quo, led to imprisonment, torture and, often death. Both perceived a largely fictional

`Golden Age' in the past – Rizal's pre-hispanic Filipino and Constantino' s revolutionary

masses of the Philippine war of independence. Both sought to exorcise cultural demons,

the influence of the friars in Rizal's case and the influence of the Americans in

Constantino' s.

While, as will be demonstrated with particular regard to Rizal, both believed in the

need for, or the option of, revolution neither writer explicitly and unequivocally called for

violent revolution against the reigning oppressors in their writings. Both men were

products of their time and place and express the zeistgeist of their environment.

Neither man lived to see the realization of their separate visions of nationalism and

liberty and their ghosts are likely themselves to be ghosts before those visions become

concrete.

To get back to the muttons. The power of Veneration Without Understanding owes

much to the Philippine school system which often projects Rizal as a flawless, almost

Christlike figure rather than the human being he was. Brought up with such hagiographic

pedagogy, students are ill prepared to view Veneration critically, a piece which appears

to overthrow all their preconceived notions, presented by politicized professors to whom

they must acquiesce or face poor grades for dissent. It undoubtedly comes as a shock.

It is now almost 30 year since the first publication of Veneration Without

Understanding and almost a decade since the death of its author.

Perhaps it is time to break the conspiracy of silence and ask the impertinent pertinent

question: Does Veneration Without Understanding stand up to scrutiny?


Consciousness of the past is

consciousness of what it is to be

a Filipino, to validate the

national identity

Part 2 – History and Polemics

If Constantino' s thesis that Rizal is unworthy of being the national hero of the

Philippines holds water then, of necessity, the law mandating compulsory study of

Rizal's books and life must be repealed. Such an act may well catapult Constantino

himself into the position vacated by Rizal, supported by generations of students who

have been forced to suffer some of the most turgid teaching the nation's educational

system has to offer.

One might suspect, with justification, that the popularity of Constantino' s Veneration

Without Understanding has less to do with what he actually says than the opportunity to

inflict a sort of surrogate revenge on all those teacher's who inflicted what Ambeth

Ocampo says was known as Putang Ina 101.

Constantino was a Marxist and his writings are inevitably based upon his political

viewpoint. This does not automatically invalidate Marxist historians such as Benedict

Anderson - named only because he's one of my personal favourites - have made original,

challenging contributions to our understanding of historical processes and how those

processes led from then to now. If

we are going to treat Constantino as

a historian, which, strictly speaking

he was not (Nor am I), we must

judge him not by his political

viewpoint but by his choice of data,

his methodology for examining that

data, and whether or not his

conclusions hold water.

If we are going to treat Constantino only as a polemicist then none of these restrictions

apply. We need only concern ourselves with how well he presented his case and how his

views were perceived and accepted. That he was a polemicist, and a very influential one,

is inarguable.

I would, and will, argue that the proper place for Constantino' s writings, including

Veneration Without Understanding is in the study of political science, not the study of

history. Their place in history is as documents showing Constantino' s thinking in the mid

late 20th

century, not those of Rizal at the end of the 19th.

Constantino was not the first Filipino to use, and abuse, history for political purposes

in this manner. That credit almost certainly belongs to Jose Rizal. I would say that same

of Jose Rizal, in particular his annotated edition of Antonio De Morga's Sucessos de las

Islas Felipinas as of Constantino: They wrote history as polemic, not history so it is not

surprising that one echoes the other.

Says Rizal: "If this book succeeds in awakening your consciousness of your past,

already effaced from your memory, and to rectify what has been falsified and slandered,

then I have not worked in vain, and with this as a basis, however small it may be, we

shall be able to study the future". Consciousness of the past is consciousness of what it is

to be a Filipino, to validate the national identity. Re-construction of the lost Filipino past


would led to the construction of a Filipino future,which is precisely Constantino' s intent

the next century.

Was that to be a Filipino future under a Spanish sovereignty reformed and enlightened

by respect for Filipinos as an equal? Or as an independent nation? More than a hint is

apparent in Rizal's response to Blumentritt' s original prologue to the book. Although that

document itself is presently lost we do know that it contained a reference to fraternity

between Spaniards and Filipinos which Rizal struck out, explaining "If the Spanish do

not want us as brothers, neither are we eager for their affection… Fraternity, like alms

from the Spaniards we do not seek… You only have the best of intentions, you want to

see the whole world embraced by means of love and reason but I doubt if the Spanish

wish the same".

This letter is immensely revealing. Rizal rejects outright the notion of fraternity with

Spain and the affection of the Spanish, a condition that would be a necessary part of

continued existence under Spanish rule in a condition of parity. Independence is the

implicit condition he is referring to. He rejects, too, the notion that `love and reason' as a

solution to what could be termed `The Spanish problem'. If not love and reason, what

then? If one cannot appeal to love and reason, then only revolution is left on the table as

an option.

It also shows us that while Rizal and Blumentritt were cordial, the former did not

slavishly accept the counsel of the latter so when, in another letter, Blumentritt opposes

violent revolution it is unwise to assume that Rizal acquiesced in his views.

In his footnotes to De Morga Rizal intends to show that the Philippines not only owed

nothing to the Spanish, in particular the friars, there was no `utang na loob', but that there

was a flourishing culture, technology and literature which was stunted by their arrival and

that the modern Filipino of the 19th century was well behind his pre-Hispanic forebears.

With pride in their past as an anchor the Filipino could then carve for himself a future of

his own choosing.

Rizal was not above exaggeration and invention to achieve the aim of fitting his data

into his pre-conceived framework and makes claims for which, often, there is not just

little or no evidence but such evidence as exists runs counter to his assertions.

Three examples serve to make the point: That Filipinos were capable of making large

cannon before the arrival of the Spanish, a skill lost under the Spanish regime, that

Filipinos had a large and flourishing trade served by vessels of up to 2,000 tons before

the coming of the Spanish, and that Spanish friars destroyed a large and flourishing body

of pre-Hispanic literature. None of these claims hold water.


George W. Bush, Jose Rizal

and Renato Constantino meet

on common ground

Part 3 - George W. Bush and Jose Rizal

Morga writes that Governor De Vera established a foundry to make artillery

"under the hands of an old indio called Pandapira, a native of Pampanga. He and

his sons served in this line of work until their deaths many years later". Rizal

clarifies the reference to Pandapira, or Panday Pira: "an indio who already knew

how to found cannons even before the arrival of the Spanish". Neither De Morga nor anyone else refers to Pandapira as a cannon maker. Indeed, De

Vera, the governor who actually hired him, proves that he was not. De Vera wrote to the

Spanish Viceroy in Mexico to plead "I cannot find anyone who knows how to found

cannons, because those provided are by Indios who do not know how to make large

cannon. I request your excellency to send from New Spain founders and officers to

manufacture cannons".

So when Rizal comments upon De Morga' statement about a later governor, Perez-

Dasmarinas, that he "established a foundry for artillery in Manila where, owing to the

lack of experts or master founders, few large piece were made" that "This demonstrates

that, when the indio Pandapira died, there were no Spaniards who knew how to do what

he did, nor were his children as skilled as their fathers", he is, frankly, talking out of his

bowler.

Let's talk about boats. De Morga

describes Filipino vessels big

enough to carry 100 rowers

outboard and 30 soldiers on an

upper deck. Alcina describes such

vessels in the Visayas and expends

several chapters describing how to build one, a precise of which, along with an artist's

rendition can be found in the works of William Henry Scott.

Rizal mourns that such vessels had disappeared by his day but goes on to make the

astonishing assertion that "The country that at one time, with primitive means, built ships

of around 2,000 tons (Has to buy ships from Hong Kong)". For the non-nautical, 2,000

tons here refers to displacement, the weight of water displaced by the hull of the vessel,

not the weight of the ship.

Nowhere in the historical or archaeological record is there a trace of pre-Hispanic

Filipino vessels of such size outside Rizal's commentary and imagination.

As for Filipino warships carrying 100 rowers and 30 soldiers, the only reason we

know how to build one today is because the technology was recorded in detail by an

admiring Spanish friar.

A similar situation surrounds Rizal's assumption that there was a significant written

literature which was destroyed by the Spanish.

Literacy was, according to De Morga and others, widespread. That pre-Hispanic

Filipinos had a written language is certainly true. Even if one disregards the 900 AD

Laguna Copper Plate as a probable import, because its markings are in no known Filipino

script and it has never been translated, something similar was presented to the Chinese


court by the ruler of Butuan in 1011 AD as did later trade missions which also presented

the Emperor of All Under The Sky with a long narrow scroll written on bamboo.

Spanish writers comment upon the literacy of the Filipino and Spanish friars and

missionaries have preserved both the languages themselves and the scripts in which they

were written while, at the same time, Spanish script replaced them.

No pre-Hispanic documents have survived, not even a fragment. The documents from

which, for instance, the Code of Kalantiaw are drawn are demonstrably fraudulent

although they still find a place in the curricula of Philippine law schools. The Maragtas,

while not actually a fraud is a collection of folklore, the author of which states that no

pre-Hispanic documents were used in its preparation, which is still misrepresented again,

in Philippine law schools.

Notably, there is only one account, of the burning of a single book, of anything that

might be taken as pre-Hispanic Filipino literature. What happened to the rest of it?

Did the Spanish destroy it? Outside Iloilo and Cebu the Spanish hold generally

extended little more than 15 kilometres inland or more than 300 metres elevation until the

mid 19th century. Friar and missionaries extended that coverage, of course, but even so,

there were only a few hundred of them, insufficient to eradicate an entire written

literature in every part of the archipelago including the non-Christianized and Muslim

domains.

In fact, the earliest Spanish records state explicitly that the Filipinos had no literature

as such. All, including those Rizal himself consulted, echo independently the observation

of the late 16th century Boxer Codex: "They have neither books nor histories nor do they

write anything of any length but only letters and reminders to one another."

So, no literature existed for the Spanish to destroy.

Obviously, then, Rizal's commentaries on the De Morga must be treated with

circumspection. They must be viewed for what they actually were – committed

scholarship, not revelations of historical fact.

Rizal created a mythical `golden age' with the implicit message "We don't need the

Spanish". The intended question in the reader's mind is `If we don't need the Spanish and

cannot be their brothers, what do we do with them?" To which there is but one

answer: revolution.

The committed scholar first creates his framework then seeks out data to fit that

framework in order to inspire the reader to take a course of action. Data which does not

fit the framework is either ignored or tyre-ironed into place with exaggeration and

imagination until the data says what the scholar wants it to say. It is a form of deliberate

confirmation bias.

Just as Rizal created a Filipino Golden Age of cannon-makers and ship-builders with a

great literature, Constantino used the same methodology to promote a similar disputable

`Golden Age' of a revolt of the masses and a cowardly reformist man of clay called Jose

Rizal.

For Rizal, to dispute his data and analysis was an unpatriotic, anti-Filipino act. When

Isabelo De Los Reyes, a contemporary researcher in Philippine history questioned some

of Rizal's assertions and citing the Spanish Fr. Rada, Rizal wrote: "… had we no positive

proof of de los Reyes patriotism, we would believe that by giving so much credit to Fr.

Rada, he had intended to denigrate his own people". To question Rizal was unpatriotic,


pro-Spanish and anti-Filipino. Similarly, to question Constantino is to be regarded as

anti-Filipino, anti-masses and pro-imperialism.

Committed scholarship admits of no middle way, it says in effect: `If you're not with

us, you are against us. If you question us, you are the enemy'. Thus George W. Bush, Jose

Rizal and Renato Constantino meet on common ground.


Few history teachers bring

attention to, or discuss, the

book’s introduction with their

students, possibly because to

do so would bring into

question the value of

Constantino’s writings as

historical source material.

Part 4 - The Truth Cannot Make You Free

To understand Constantino, his intent and his methodology one must explore the

framework into which he fitted his historical data. In the preface to his collection of

articles, Dissent and Counter-Consciousness, he writes “…although these essays were

not written as parts of a book, they nevertheless follow a consistent pattern of

discussing present society from the vantage point of the past and past society in the

light of present reality. Such a method of discussion could not but project ideas on

the modes and dimensions of social change”.

Compare this to the preface to Rizal’s annotated De Morga: “In the Noli I began to

sketch the present state of our native land. The effect that my attempt produced pointed

out to me, before proceeding to unfold the other successive pictures before your eyes, the

necessity of first making known to you the past in order that you may be able to judge

better the present and to measure the

road traversed during three

centuries… If the book succeeds in

awakening your consciousness of our

past, already effaced from your

memory, and to rectify what has been

falsified and slandered… we shall be

able to study the future”.

Constantino’s philosophy for

dealing with historical data is further

clarified in a second book, published

in 1975, “The Philippines – A Past

Revisited”. The book is a primary

reference work for Filipino students but few have their own copies, most relying on

handouts of specific photocopied pages. Few history teachers bring attention to, or

discuss, the book’s introduction with their students, possibly because to do so would

bring into question the value of Constantino’s writings as historical source material.

Significantly, Constantino admits that ‘a Past Revisited’ is not a People’s History of

the Philippines and challenges Filipino historians to write one. As of this date, more than

30 years later, not a single committed scholar has taken up his challenge, even though

‘committed scholarship’, or committed ‘scholarship’, now represents the status quo. One

can imagine four reasons why no-one has taken up Constantino’ challenge – intellectual

cowardice, a dearth of new and original thinking, reluctance to research original sources,

or fear that Constatino’s assertions, based on those of Agoncillo, will not stand up to

close scrutiny.

It should be noted that Blumentritt’s critique of Rizal’s De Morga, and reviews of

Constantino, echo each other – neither said anything original about the effects of

imperialism that hadn’t been well-covered elsewhere.

In Rizal’s day there were few Filipino scholars of history, by Constantino’s there were

many. Constantino dismisses those historians who sought to be balanced and objective, to

do so, in his view, was a symptom of colonial mentality: “the work of these scholars was

till undertaken primarily in the interests of ‘objectivity’ and for this reason did not fall


Constantino proposes that

people’s access to information

must be censored for their own

good, as have dictators and

tyrants down the centuries.

within the framework of an essentially liberating scholarship.” What Constantino tells us,

then, is that objectivity cannot be liberating. To misquote the motto of a major Philippine

daily newspaper, he tells us ‘The truth cannot make you free’.

Of particular note is his comment: “when intellectual decolonisation shall have been

accomplished, a historical account can be produced which will present a fuller, more

balanced picture of reality”. For Constantino, then, Filipinos are not ready for an

objective study of their own history, rather as the Americans considered Filipinos ill-

prepared for independence. Further, this note is an implicit admission that his book does

not represent reality.

Constantino proposes that people’s access to information must be censored for their

own good, as have dictators and tyrants down the centuries. He does not identify whom

should be the censor, certainly not the masses since he accuses them, without trial, as

swallowing the American perception

of Rizal in toto. When Constantino

accuses Rizal of not trusting the

masses he is projecting upon the

national hero his own view of the

masa.

Enforced ignorance is a form of

tyranny in itself. Ignorance is the

means by which tyranny seeks to

sustain itself. Contantino, therefore

seeks to overthrow one tyrant, Ferdinand Marcos (We might include American neo-

colonialists, too), with another of Constantino’s choosing.

He complains: “we habitually analyze Philippine society in the light of colonial myths

and foreign concepts and values…” Indeed, Constantino himself does so. His analysis is

based not on Filipino concepts and values but on those of a 19th

century German

economist, Karl Marx. Since Marx and Rizal both studied at the British Museum it may

be that some mystical osmosis transferred Filipino concepts and values from Rizal to

Marx but somehow that seems a dubious proposition.

Moreover, Constantino depends upon an American concept of Rizal as merely a

reformer. So when Constantino complains that ‘we (Filipinos) habitually analyze

Philippine society in the light of … foreign values and concepts’ one cannot disagree

with him since he himself invokes alien ideologies to analyze his society.

One may, therefore question whether Constantino truly wrote history from a Filipino

viewpoint, as Rizal undoubtedly had done, but that would be to miss the point: Like

Rizal, Constantino was writing polemic, not history, and Veneration Without

Understanding is polemic intended to persuade Filipinos to ‘think properly’, ie., to think

like Constantino.

Let us look at how Constantino constructed his arguments and assembled his data.


…A national hero has a

variety of functions, one of

which is to be the archetype of

the people’s aspirations. Few

people aspire to be a failure…

Part 5 – Un-inventing A Revolutionary

Contantino presents us first with a list of national heroes: Washington, Lenin,

Bolivar, Sun Yat Sen, Mao and Ho Chi Minh. All led successful revolutions. What

Constantino fails to do is to present us with a list of national heroes who led failed

revolutions.

During the glorified tax-dodge that was the American War of Independence,

Washington withdrew to Valley Forge on a losing streak but, thanks in no small part to

French financial and materiel support and direct intervention, recovered to win

independence from the British. The

Philippine revolution has no

comparable tale to tell and no

successful revolutionary leader to

become the national hero because

that revolution failed, thus there can

be no Philippine revolutionary

national hero to complete the

pantheon presented by Constantino

for comparison.

A national hero has a variety of functions, one of which is to be the archetype of the

people’s aspirations. Few people aspire to be a failure, which may be one good reason

why Filipinos chose Rizal as the person they most wanted to be.

Next, Constantino seeks to show that Rizal was pro-Spanish, anti-liberty, anti-

revolution and anti-independence using a calibrated scale from “he placed him against

Bonifacio” to “vehement condemnation of the mass movement” to “…our Revolution”.

Let’s explore this a little. Rizal was in Dapitan when he was approached by Pio

Valenzuela to support a revolution planned by a man he did not know, Bonifacio, and

whose personal qualities and integrity he could not judge.

There are various accounts of this meeting but the sum of them, including those

presented in Rizal’s trial, is that Rizal did not reject or repudiate revolution or his

involvement in it outright. He asked about money and arms, to be told there was little of

either. Rizal was clearly aware of the danger presented by the elite and the need to get

their support – otherwise where would the money and arms come from? He feared, too,

that their money and influence could crush the revolution and said as much.

He was told that this man, whom he did not know, without arms or money, had not

recruited such support. It was on those grounds that Rizal refused to back Bonifacio, not

because he was proposing a revolution but because Bonifacio and the Katipunan simply

hadn’t got their act together.

Rizal’s refusal had no effect on subsequent events because Bonifacio ensured that it

was kept a secret, although he continued to invoke Rizal’s name as the password for

entrance into Katipunan lodges, which were held under the gaze of photographs of Rizal.

The latter’s misgivings proved correct: learning of Bonifacio’s plans the Spanish

authorities seized the initiative, which Bonifacio was not able to recover. Bonifacio was

roundly beaten and went into hiding in Cavite. There, the Bonifacio revolution died and

was in its death throes even before his ignominious execution at Maragondon.


…the masses were disillusioned

with the revolutionary

leadership and rather tired of

being robbed, tortured, raped

and murdered by revolutionary

commanders and their men…

Bonifacio remained a largely forgotten, minor figure in Philippine history until

resurrected under American tutelage. It was the American regime which renamed Calle

Malecon as Calle Bonifacio, likewise in the 1920s it allowed the appropriation of 15,000

pesos, to be taken from the cedula taxes of Olongapo and Corregidor for a Bonifacio

Memorial School. A memorial to Bonifacio was allowed to be built in 1917 and a brass

plaque in Malacanang two decades later put his name not only alongside Rizal, but that of

William McKinley.

Unlike Rizal, it took an American puppet government to revive interest in Bonifacio

and the Americans recognized him AS a hero of the Philippines.

Be that as it may, Rizal’s hesitation to support the Bonifacio revolution was well

founded and by the time he was arrested the Luneta was already a sea of courageous

patriot’s blood being shed in his name in response to a leader then in hiding. It is against

that background that his manifesto to the Filipino people should be read. The manifesto

was not made public at the time because it repudiated neither revolution per se nor

independence and the fear was that releasing it would cause an upsurge in revolutionary

activity.

Constantino’s condemnation of Rizal lumps his refusal to join Bonifacio with an

implicit condemnation of ALL those fighting for the country’s freedom. Is this true?

Rizal’s unnamed poem which we know today as Mi Ultimo Ados is not merely a love

song to his country, it is a stirring call to arms to shed blood for it, which is very apparent

in the second stanza where he explicitly refers to the ongoing revolution and the

continuum of the struggle since at least 1876.

Now let’s take a brief look at the ‘mass movement’. Constantino borrows Teodoro

Agoncillo’s concept of a revolution of the masses and blames its failure on the

turncoatism of the elite. It is treated as axiomatic yet the historical record suggests

otherwise. Many of the much maligned elite fought it out to the end, even through the

Philippine-American War,

Vicente Lukban being just one

example. Like Agoncillo,

Constantino avoids the very

pertinent question: If it was a

movement of the masses, how

could the betrayal by a handful of

the elite cause it to collapse?

There is, in fact, little evidence

that the revolution was a

revolution of the masses more

than, say, a revolution of the elite, merely calling it such doesn’t make it so. Indeed,

especially during the Philippine-American War period there is plentiful evidence that the

masses were disillusioned with the revolutionary leadership and rather tired of being

robbed, tortured, raped and murdered by revolutionary commanders and their men.

Hundreds of such reports, by Filipinos, are spread throughout the largely unexplored

volumes of the Philippine Revolutionary Records. Constantino was aware of these reports

because he edited the 1973 publication, by the Lopez Foundation, of JRM Taylor’s The

Philippine Insurrection Against The United States, which includes a selection of about

1,500 PRR documents out of a total of some 600,000.


The captures of Aguinaldo and Lukban and the surrenders of Trias and Macabulos

were followed by the end of effective resistance to American rule. Resistance did

continue but it was disorganized, disunited and sporadic. Often, Filipinos suffered more

than the enemy: During the Pulahanes period in Samar, more Filipinos were killed by the

Pulahanes than by the Americans during the Samar campaign, the ‘Hemp War’, of early

summer 1901 to April 1902. Indeed, the very same townsmen who, in 1901, had

successfully attacked and defeated an American garrison at Balangiga, the worse single

disaster for American forces during the 1899-1902 war, were driven to capture not only a

leading pulahane but one who was one of their own kinsman.

Historical data simply does not support Constantino’s concept of a revolution of the

masses. Rizal’s Golden Age of great Filipino cannon-makers, writers of great bodies of

Filipino literature and Filipino builders of 2,000 tonne ships occupy the same reality-

space as Constantino’s revolutionary masses.


To simply blame the

elite may be

convenient, but it is

an excuse and far

too simplistic.

Part 6 – Revolution? Which Revolution?

“Either the Revolution was wrong, yet we cannot disown it, or Rizal was wrong, yet

we cannot disown him either.” Says Constantino. These are worrying, challenging

questions for a patriotic, nationalistic Filipino, even one who is not a Marxist. But

are they the right questions?

Let us remind ourselves: We have the Spanish, not Bonifacio, to thank for launching

the revolution. Bonifacio proved an incompetent commander, was driven out of Manila

and failed again at Indang in Cavite. Aguinaldo, the bête noir of Constantino, as well as

other members of the elite, took and held territory with some success. None, however,

showed inspired military leadership. The revolutionaries had Manila invested in late 1896

yet did not push their advantage and throw out the

Spaniards. That lack of decisiveness allowed time

for the Spanish to receive reinforcements (Few

veterans, most of them were raw, untrained

recruits). While the revolution did not collapse in its

entirety it lost sufficient ground that, along with the

depredations by the Filipinos forces against the

common tao under the pretext of revolution, morale

fell sufficiently for the situation to become

unwinnable for either side.

We cannot disown this history. We must accept it. To simply blame the elite may be

convenient, but it is an excuse and far too simplistic. Perhaps we should take a leaf out of

the book of the British: The Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War was

suicidal, courageous, magnificent, and the result of incompetent leadership. Said a French

general, “It’s magnificence, but is it war?”.

In the early part of World War 2 British forces in Europe were thoroughly clobbered

by the Nazis and forced to withdraw across the English Channel (The French call it La

Manche, unwilling to accept that the English actually had a channel) through the small

French town of Dunkirk. Those forces had to be rescued by a fleet of ships and tiny

private yachts, some little more than exaggerated rowboats, which set off across the

channel to bring them back. Dunkirk was a failure yet the term ‘the Dunkirk spirit’, the

unwillingness to give up even when the odds are against you, still survives.

The Philippine Revolution, or rather Bonmfacio’s part of it, was the Filipino Charge of

the Light Brigade, its Dunkirk. It is not only victories that define national character, so do

defeats.

Even if we accept the concept of a revolution of the masses, was it a revolution for the

masses? There is nothing in Bonifacio’s or the Katipunan’s political philosophy that

suggested anything other than a change of personalities, certainly there is nothing to

suggest that systemic change in ownership of the economy or access to power. Indeed,

the elections at Tejeros, supervised by Bonifacio, suggest that the revolution would

merely extrapolate local municipal politics to a national scale. Since for most ordinary

Filipinos the interface with the power structure was these same principales, they could

expect little real change.

Constantino’s/Agoncillo’s concept demands that we think of the revolution as a single

monolithic movement. But was it? Although the Katipunan philosophy offered little to


the common tao there were others who underpinned ‘their’ revolution with something

more substantive. The Pensacola brothers in Zambales, for instance fought under the

motto ‘It is time for the rich to be poor and the poor to be rich’, a clear and distinct

demand for systemic economic and political change and equitable distribution of

resources for the benefit of the masses. No such philosophy tainted the revolution in

Cavite and Manila or the lips of Bonifacio or Aguinaldo.

So whose revolution is ‘our’ revolution, the ‘revolution of the masses? Bonifacio’s or

that of the Pensacolas? Which revolution did Rizal actually repudiate?


the greatest threat to liberty

was not the Spanish but the

Filipinos themselves

Part 7 – Constantino’s Equivocation On The Unequivocal

How ‘unequivocal’ was Rizal’s condemnation of the revolution in Manila? What he

repudiated was very specific, a conflict in which people were dying in the belief that

Bonifacio had Rizal’s support, an uprising which Rizal held, rightly as it turned out,

was premature, information that had been kept secret from the revolutionaries by

Bonifacio.

Correctly, the Spanish advocate at his trial, deduced that Rizal was not anti-revolution

or anti-separatist, ie., independent at that his opposition was a matter of time and

opportunity, not substance.

Rizal certainly favoured independence, as much is implicit in his published writings

and speeches and explicit in his private correspondence – if somewhat cautiously – and

private conversations – ‘who launches a revolution will have me at his side’ he told his

fellow ‘bedspacer’ in Europe, Jose Alejandrino.

Revolution was an optional route to independence, but not necessarily the only option.

Rizal’s focus was on liberty, a condition in which Filipinos could achieve their full

potential as individuals, as a society and

as a nation. This could only be achieved

through individual dignity and the

respect for the dignity of others.

He was well aware that the greatest

threat to liberty was not the Spanish but

the Filipinos themselves. There was no point in independence if today’s slaves were to

become tomorrow’s tyrants. Revolution and independence were therefore useless unless

the endpoint was Filipino liberty – not merely removing the Spanish but preventing, too,

future tyranny by Filipinos.

The Manila revolution merely sought to replace Spaniards with Filipinos. No

underpinning of political philosophy as such was formalized until mid-1898. It was not

unequivocally a revolution for the masses.

Constantino’s dichotomy between owning or disowning the revolution or owning or

disowning Rizal as the National hero cannot be resolved in Constantino’s terms. It

requires objective study and understanding of the objectives of Bonifacio’s revolution

and of Rizal , the application of an instrument which Constantino himself confesses he

denies to his Filipino readers - objectivity. To quote Constantino out of context: “This is a

disservice to the event, to the man, and to ourselves.”

Freedom, to Constantino, is the absence of Spanish rulers and the presence of Filipino

rulers regardless of the quality of their leadership. To Rizal, freedom was the presence of

a Filipino liberty which promoted the interests and potential of all Filipinos. Constantino

was fully aware of this, he was a well-read man, so was Rizal the real target of

Veneration Without Understanding?

“(Considering Rizal as a nationalist leader) … has dangerous implications because it

can be used to exculpate those who actively betrayed the Revolution and may serve to

diminish the ardor of those who today may be called upon to support another great

nationalist undertaking to complete the anti-colonial movement” wrote Constantino.

Rizal, then, must be removed from his pedestal not because of his worth as an individual

but as an atomic particle in a class which Constantino hold betrayed the 1896 revolution


and the Katipunan, because he represents a class which Constantino considered a threat to

the anti-colonialist movement of the 1960s.

Rizal must be toppled because Constantino wanted to topple his class among whom,

by extrapolation, was Ferdinand Marcos, a lawyer, whose star was on the rise as

Constantino wrote his famous article. It has been said that the problem with dictators isn’t

that they don’t love their country but that they love it too much. Marcos, odious dictator

though he became, was a nationalist and cunningly played US interests against Russian

and Chinese interests. It is far too simplistic to see Marcos and merely a super-cacaique

to sought to preserve power and extract wealth. He loved his country, identified himself

with it and saw an attack on himself as an attack on his country and considered his own

leadership as the only one that could defend and protect it.

Out of that nationalism came the very tyranny that Rizal feared, a fear that led to his

repudiation of Bonifacio.

Bonifacio’s leadership was tested in the field of battle and found wanting. The

elections at the Tejeros convention were a judgement on his competence a leader..

In that context it is worth noting that one reason for the change from a Katipunan

leadership to a revolutionary government leadership at Tejeros was that many of those

fighting were not katipuneros and a Katipunan government would leave their struggle

unrepresented and unrecognized.

Years later a monument was built to memorialize all those who fought the Spanish in

1896, The Heroes of ’96, which singles out no individual hence encompasses both the

leaders and the masa, the Katipuneros and the non-Katipuneros, who participated in the

revolution.

Today, that monument stands in the grounds of UP and has been dubbed the Bonifacio

monument, its true meaning forgotten. Those anonymous thousands, the fighting masa,

once honoured by the statue have been sacrificed on the altar of Bonifacio.


Part 8 – The Filipino-Sponsored Hero

“'And now, gentlemen, you must have a national hero.' In these fateful words,

addressed by then Civil Governor W. H. Taft to the Filipino members of the civil

commission, Pardo de Tavera, Legarda, and Luzuriaga, lay the genesis of Rizal

Day…..” writes Constantino in a section of Veneration Without Understanding

subtitled An American Sponsored Hero. He is wrong.

The genesis of Rizal Day was December 31, 1898 when Emilio Aguinaldo declared

a national day of mourning for Rizal. It was repeated exactly a year later with

commemorative broadsheets distributed in Rizal’s honour. Taft became the civil

Governor of the Philippines on July 4 1901 by which time Rizal Day was already well

established, in fact if not in name.

A depressing number of young Filipinos today read ‘American-sponsored hero’ as

‘American-invented hero’, the latter is nonsense. Constantino concedes that Rizal was

already a revered figure and more so

after his death. “There is no question

that Rizal had the qualities of

greatness. History cannot deny his

patriotism. He was a martyr to

oppression, obscurantism and bigotry.

His dramatic death captured the

imagination of our people”, he writes.

Rizal was more than that. His

patriotism was a self-less life-giving love of country that few can match. A cosmopolitan

man if immense nobility and dignity yet still tainted by humanity. Just 5’ 1” tall, he had

overcome personal short-comings and physical weakness to become an intellectual and

thinker respected in Europe, a poet and artist of talent, and a smart resourceful amateur

engineer, as his contributions to Dapitan show. His educational records show he was not

a natural genius, he literally created himself. Any Filipino could have been, and could

still be, Jose Rizal. He was, intentionally, an archetype of what the Filipino can be.

Herein lays a core fault in Constantino’s analysis. He sees Rizal solely in relation to

the revolution, or revolutions, he does not consider that Rizal is a hero for all ages,

revolution or not. He was perceived as a hero before the revolution and remained so

afterwards. Whether or not the Americans colonized the Philippines he’d still have been

just as great a hero.

Constantino surrounds his thesis that Rizal was a posthumous ‘Amboy’ with

significant qualifiers: “It cannot be denied that his pre-eminence among our heroes was

partly the result of American sponsorship… we must accept the fact that his formal

designation as our national hero, his elevation to his present eminence so far above all our

other heroes was abetted and encouraged by the Americans.” If Rizal’s elevation was

only partly the result of ‘American sponsorship’ then it must be conceded that it was also

partly, if not mostly, the result of the will of the Filipino people themselves.

The reference to the formal designation clearly does not refer to Aguinaldo’s 1898

order but to the acts promulgated by the American Philippine Commission which

renamed Morong province as Rizal, opened a public subscription for a monument and set

aside an annual day of observance, the latter, of course, had already been done by

A depressing number of

young Filipinos today read

‘American-sponsored hero’

as ‘American-invented hero’,

the latter is nonsense.


Aguinaldo. Why the emphasis on formal? Because it is a weasel word without which

Constantino’s thesis falls apart. Rizal was already the de facto national hero, chosen by

the Filipinos, the acts of the Philippine Commission merely recognition of the prevailing

sentiment.

To parse his argument and avoid taking responsibility, Constantino relies upon a

foreigner, American historian Theodore Friend: ‘Taft "with other American colonial

officials and some conservative Filipinos, chose him (Rizal) as a model hero over other

contestants - Aguinaldo too militant, Bonifacio too radical, Mabini unregenerate."

This, as older generation Britons might

say, is just so much tosh. National heroes

almost always have one significant thing in

common: they’re dead. Aguinaldo was very

much alive until the 1960s, and, in fact no

longer militant. He was still under house

arrest in Manila. Mabini, at that time, was

also still alive. What about Bonifacio?

Courageous though he was, incompetent commanders aren’t usually nominated a

country’s national hero, and his willingness to split the revolutionary forces in a temper

tantrum at Tejeros makes him somewhat questionable.

But there are other considerations: The Americans conceded that Bonifacio wsa a

hero, his first monument was erected under an American puppet government in 1917 and

his name was inscribed along with others on a brass plaque mounted in Malacanang in

the 1920s (A plaque he shares, by the way, with President William McKinley!), but

would Bonifacio be acceptable to Cavitenos, who believe he threatened the revolution

and whose provincial son, Aguinaldo, killed Bonifacio? Would Aguinaldo be acceptable

to Manilenos, since he’d killed Bonifacio, or Nueva Ecijans, who blame Aguinaldo for

Luna death? Rizal’s name was known to virtually every Filipino, Mabini’s wasn’t.

The simple fact is that the Americans had no other choice but to accept the Filipino

choice of Rizal because no-one else was such an undisputed, uncontroversial choice as

national hero. Constantino himself concedes: “The honors bestowed on Rizal were

naturally appreciated by the Filipinos who were proud of him.”

Constantino then accepts, without question, another foreigner’s concept of Rizal, that

of former Governor-General Forbes: “Rizal never advocated independence, nor did he

advocate armed resistance to the government. He urged reform from within by

publicity, by public education, and appeal to the public conscience”. The emphasis is

supplied by Constantino, not Forbes. Had Forbes written: “Rizal never advocated

independence without liberty, nor did he advocate armed resistance to the government

unless liberty was the outcome..” he’d have shown far greater understanding of Rizal’s

thinking.

Certainly the Americans did revise Rizal into a pacifist reformer, of that there is no

question, but that is not Rizal’s fault. It is this American-created myth that Constantino

wishes us to judge Rizal by.

What Constantino utterly fails to tell us is what the masa actually thought of Rizal.

He talks about the masa, he talks at the masa, but nowhere does he listen to the masa.

What did his maid, or his cook, or his driver, or the sari-sari store owner, or the tricycle

driver or the truck driver, or the farm worker, or the sweat-shop labouring seamstress, or

National heroes almost

always have one

significant thing in

common: they’re dead.


the taho vendor think of Rizal? Did their views coincide with those of the Americans or

the schoolbook writers which he cites but whom a minority of Filipinos actually read?

We don’t know because Constantino never asked the people whom he claimed to

represent.

With irony, Constantino writes: “it is now time for us to view Rizal with more

rationality and with more historicity... Rizal will still occupy a good position in our

national pantheon even if we discard hagiolatry and subject him to a more mature

historical evaluation… A proper understanding of our history is very important to us

because it will serve to demonstrate how our present has been distorted by a faulty

knowledge of our past… That is why a critical evaluation of Rizal cannot but lead to a

revision of our understanding of history and of the role of the individual in history.”

All of which sounds fine but how can we view Rizal with ‘more rationality and with

more historicity… and subject him to more mature historical evaluation’ if we are denied

the tools of accuracy and objectivity, tools which Constantino says must be denied the

Filipino? True, objectivity is a challenge, an ideal which can rarely be quite reached yet

we find truth not in discarding it but in trying to achieve it.

Note that Constantino refers to “A proper (my emphasis) understanding of our

history” because “it will serve to demonstrate how our present has been distorted by a

faulty knowledge of our past…” Not an accurate understanding of history, not a full

understanding, but the understanding that Constantino would wish us to have by

suppressing data and creating “a faulty knowledge of our past”.

Where I do concur with Constantino is that Rizal is treated as some sort of superhero

and should not be. It was not a superhero who inspired the revolution, whose reputation

inspired others to shed blood for their nation, it was a man. Painting Rizal with a broad

hagiographic brush not only creates as false an image of Rizal and his thinking as

Constatino does in his article but, as far worse, creates a barrier between us and him, a

barrier between what we are and what we can be.


…the revolution

broke out with Rizal’s

assumed, but false,

explicit blessing,

thanks to Bonifacio,

and continued with

the implicit blessing

given in Mi Ultimo

Adios...

Part 9 – Liberty Or Tyranny?

“With or without these specific individuals the social relations engendered by

Spanish colonialism and the subsequent economic development of the country

would have produced the nationalist movement,” says Constantino, and he is

certainly correct. But is he correct when he says “But he is not a hero in the sense

that he could have stopped and altered the course of events. The truth of this

statement is demonstrated by the fact that the Revolution broke out despite his

refusal to lead it and continued despite his condemnation of it.”? In fact, as noted earlier, Rizal’s refusal to support Bonifacio was kept secret and

Rizal’s condemnation of him remained suppressed so no-one actually knew about them.

What did go into public awareness was the poem we know today as Mi Ultimo Adios, a

moving call to arms to shed blood for the country. It would be more accurate to say that

the revolution broke out with Rizal’s assumed, but false, explicit blessing, thanks to

Bonifacio, and continued with the implicit

blessing given in Mi Ultimo Adios.

Constantino’s basis for dismissing the

possibility that Rizal could have altered the flow

of events, and thus cannot or should not be

regarded as a hero, is based on a false assumption.

Rizal appreciated that he was not the only

game in town and yet had a place in history. In a

letter to be published after his death he wrote: “I

know that at present, the future of my country

gravitates in part around me…but my country has

many sons who can take it to advantange… there

are still others who can take my place…”

Yet “…he was only a limited Filipino, the

ilustrado Filipino who fought for national unity

but feared the Revolution” writes Contantino, but Rizal feared tyranny far more. His

room-mate in Ghent, Jose Alejandrino, says: “One of the subjects he discussed frequently

with us were the means by which we could make use of in order to promote a revolution”

and quotes Rizal himself as saying: “I will never lead a disorderly revolution and one

which has no probability of success because I do not want to burden my conscience with

an imprudent and useless spilling of blood, but whoever leads a revolution in the

Philippines will have me at his side.”

Alejandrino read the galleyproofs of El Filibusterismo as it was being printed. Of his

characters Rizal said “I regret having killed Elias instead of Cristomo Ibarra; but when I

wrote the Noli Me Tangere… I never thought that I would be able to write its sequel and

speak of a revolution, otherwise I would have preserved the life of Elias, who was a noble

character, patriotic, self-denying and disinterested – necessary qualities in a man who

leads a revolution – whereas Cristomo Ibarra was an egotist who only decided to provoke

the rebellion when he was hurt in his interests… with men like him, success cannot be

expected in their undertakings”.

The echoes of Ibarra in Bonifacio are eery.


To Rizal, the means

didn’t matter, the

endpoint, liberty, did.

Further, Constantino ignores Rizal’s own testimony at his trial regarding his meeting

in Dapitan with Pio Valenzuela according to the court stenographer (My emphasis):

“(Rizal) told him that it was hardly the time to embark on such foolhardy ventures, as

there was no unity among the various classes of Filipino, nor did they have arms, nor

ships, nor education, nor any requirements for a resistance movement… it was (Rizal’s)

opinion that they ought to wait.”

In private conversation and correspondence such as that with Blumentritt, Rizal

considers revolution as an option but not as an end in itself. It was not revolution that

Rizal feared, but one that went off half-cock.

Rizal’s reference to Cuba raises a point almost universally overlooked. Cuba, too, had

been fighting a war of independence against Spain that seemed interminable and

unwinnable. Cuban revolutionaries, too, reached an agreement with the Spanish along

much the same lines as Aguinaldo was to reach at the Pact of Biak-Na-Bato. Rizal

advised “Let them learn from Cuba, where the people, although possessing abundant

means and the backing of a great power, and being schooled in war, are powerless to

achieve their objectives. Moreover, whatever may be the issue of that struggle, it will be

to Spain’s advantage to grant concessions to the Philippines.”

Clearly, Rizal saw the Cuban struggle as a warning and also an opportunity to take

another step towards liberty.

Usually ignored, too, is the fact that Spain lost its empire on the American continent in

a series of revolts in the early part of the 19th

century. The result was a series of unstable

states from Mexico to Terra Del Fuego that were independent but, thanks to various

shades of tyranny and oppression, hardly advertisements for revolution as a process that

would automatically liberate the masses as Constantino assumes.

Writing, as usual, ex cathedra, Constantino writes “his (Rizal’s) cultural upbringing

was such that affection for Spain and Spanish civilization precluded the idea of breaking

the chains of colonialism. He had to become a Spaniard first before becoming a Filipino.”

This seems a little rich coming, as it does, from someone so dependent upon an imported,

alien, 19th

century political philosophy rather than an indigenous philosophy developed

by Filipinos for Filipinos.

Responding to an article by Pablo Feced published in a Manila newpaper, Rizal

writes: “ (Feced aka Quioquiap) wants separation and he is right. The Filipinos have long

desired Hispanization and have been wrong. Spain should desire this hispanization, not

the Filipinos.”

True, in a couple of his writings, Rizal talks

of staying with Spain for the time being since

the Filipinos and Spanish share such a long

history. He does so, however, against the

backdrop of potential colonization by other

existing and emerging powers like Britain,

Germany, Japan and the US. He recognizes that the state of disunity and lack of resources

available to the Filipino not only made a successful revolution unlikely, but even with a

successful revolution they did not have what was necessary to protect and defend

themselves as an independent state, as in fact, proved to be the case. In a realpolitik sense

the Philippines was not ready for independence since it could not maintain that

independence.


One must also consider that not only had Spain already lost most of its overseas

colonies to revolutions but Spain itself had undergone several revolutions since the mid-

19th

century and was in danger of tearing itself apart in civil war.

Spain’s ability to preserve its empire by force was dwindling and historical forces

were limiting its options. Ultimately it would either have to surrender the Philippines,

abandoning it to its own future or by passing sovereignty to another colonizer, the latter

certainly through war as finally happened, or by increasing liberties to the Filipino,

offering parity and, ultimately, independence.

Thus independence without a revolution was already on the cards and Rizal was aware

of it. Indeed his manifesto, written during his trial, says as much and one can justifiably

wonder who was the intended audience, Filipinos or the Spanish administration.

It can be argued that if the Filipinos had sided with Spain in Spanish-American War

and held Manila until news of the cessation of hostilities reached the Philippines, the

country may had won independence earlier. In microcosm that may have been Rizal’s

strategy in applying to go to Cuba to provided medical services. In Dapitan he was

neutralized in exile. Had he served in Cuba, the Spanish could hardly have sent him back

into exile on his return or banned him from returning to the country. It would have been a

powerful propaganda coup for Philippine liberty and independence. His arrest and the

unauthorised use of his name by Bonifacio however sealed his fate.

Constantino concedes, “Rizal contributed much to the growth of this national

consciousness. It was a contribution not only in terms of propaganda but in something

positive that the present generation of Filipinos will owe to him and for which they will

honor him by completing the task which he so nobly began...This contribution was in the

realm of Filipino nationhood - the winning of our name as a race, the recognition of our

people as one, and the elevation of the indio into Filipino.”

That, of course, is one of the reasons why he is the National Hero, not solely a

revolutionary hero. However, in the midst of that ellipsis, Constantino describes Rizal’s

goal of liberty as “already passé, something we take for granted”. So, Constantino’s

generation will complete Rizal’s task (They didn’t), but it is already passé and taken for

granted. Huh?

No, Mr. Constantino, Rizal’s task will be passé when the Philippines is a land without

slaves or tyrants and when human dignity is respected, when it is a land in which each of

its people can reach their full potential.

Constantino cites Rizal’s brief to his defense lawyer as evidence that Rizal was anti-

Independence: ”. many have interpreted my phrase to have liberties as to have

independence, which are two different things. A people can be free without being

independent, and a people can be independent without being free. I have always desired

liberties for the Philippines and I have said so. Others who testify that I said

independence either have put the cart before the horse or they lie.”

Rizal does not say that he does not desire independence. Independence and liberty are

two separate states, as even a cursory glance around numerous of the world’s independent

but hardly free states, and he is cautioning against such situations as is evident in his

remark “(they) have put the cart before the horse”, they got it the wrong way around but

both cart and horse, liberty and independence, are part of the future.

Perhaps it is the zen-like simplicity of Rizal’s thought that eluded Constantino. Most

of us have heard the phrase “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear” and


Rizal said something similar, also cited by Constantino: “I do not mean to say that our

liberty will be secured at the sword's point, for the sword plays but little part in modern

affairs, but that we must secure it by making ourselves worthy of it, by exalting the

intelligence and the dignity of the individual, by loving justice, right and greatness, even

to the extent of dying for them - and when a people reaches that height God will provide

a weapon, the idols will be shattered, the tyranny will crumble like a house of cards and

liberty will shine out like the first dawn.”

Constantino misinterprets this to mean that Rizal intends that “freedom is a diploma to

be granted by a superior people to an inferior one after years of apprenticeship”. Rizal

means nothing of the sort – the judge of when people are ready is not some ‘superior

people’, it is the people, the masses themselves and the interplay between them and

historical dynamics that will create the means by which their liberty is attained, whether

it be by revolution, by seizing independence, or through a peaceful, Gandhi-like ‘war’ of

attrition. To Rizal, the means didn’t matter, the endpoint, liberty, did.

It is important to note Rizal’s imagery of the dawn, “liberty will shine out like the first

dawn”. In a letter to the Filipino people written in 1892, for publication after his death, he

wrote “I shall die blessing my country and wishing her the dawn of redemption. This is

the dawn he refers to in Mi Ultimo Adios, a dawn he clearly believed was breaking as he

shed his blood on the earth of Bagumbayan and, in that same poem, urged his

countrymen to shed theirs.


“…the value of Veneration

Without Understanding is

not as a source of historical

analysis of Rizal’s place as

national hero, but in what it

tells of someone who

played a key role in the

political activism of the

1960s and 1970s, Renato

Constantino…”

Conclusions

Where does all this leave us? First, Rizal was a national hero sponsored by Filipinos

so forcefully that the Americans had little choice. Second, that Rizal believed that

when Filipinos achieved a national consciousness thatcontinuously denied tyrants

their supremacy the means for overthrowing the tyrants would self-generate out of

the people themselves. Third that Rizal saw revolution and independence as options

once national consciousness had been achieved.

The second conclusion is that Constantino is a thoroughly unreliable source of

analysis of Rizal’s philosophy since he has suppressed and distorted all data that does not

fit within his pre-conceived polemical framework.

Third, the value of Veneration Without Understanding is not as a source of historical

analysis of Rizal’s place as national hero, but in what it tells of someone who played a

key role in the political activism of the

1960s and 1970s, Renato Constantino. It

should therefore be viewed as a polemical

historical document of the mid-late 20th

century.

Much has changed since Constantino’s

day, yet also little. Ferdinand Marcos was

overthrown in in 1986 in a revolution

begun by a military coup sponsored by

the wealthy elite that was co-opted by the

Catholic Church that succeeded as a coup

because of the power of the masses. Yet

as a revolution it failed because the

masses did not maintain and defend what

they had struggled for and the status quo

re-asserted itself, which is precisely what

Rizal feared almost a century before.

Without question a people have the right to liberty but implicit in that right are two

duties: To respect the right of liberty of others, those who do not do so are by definition

tyrants; and to fight for, defend and maintain that liberty. If these two duties are

abrogated then the right to liberty necessarily falls by the wayside. Only those who have

internalized those principles honour them and live by them can successfully achieve a

state of liberty, of kalayaan in the sense outlined in Rey Ileto’s Pasyon and Revolution

and it is that internalization which is the liwanag, the light, that will illuminate the road to

kalayaan.

No-one can deny the heroism and courage of the thousands of ordinary Filipinos who

gathered on EDSA, any more than we can deny that of those who fought the Spanish and

American regimes. Each one of them became national heroes, even though they remain

largely nameless. Yet is it not time to explore why that unity and that awesome desire for

change foundered?

It is certainly time to ask, objectively and dispassionately why the movement of which

Constantino was a part failed to deliver the goods, failed to inspire the masses, and still

fails to inspire them today, the true role of activist events such a the First Quarter Storm

and their contribution, or lack thereof, to the events of 1986 and whether it is relevant to


today’s Philippines. Critical examination of the polemics of Veneration Without

Understanding should be a part of that exploration.

Liberty is not a fashion accessory to be worn once and put away in a cupboard like the

Che Guevarra sweat-shirts and radical chic of the 1960s and 1970s. It is a dynamic

process which must be defended anew each day. Rizal’s writings show that he understood

the need to dynamically maintain and defend liberty, Constantino did not.

Constantino wrote of Rizal and the masses: “He was their martyr; they recognized his

labors although they knew that he was already behind them in their forward march”. If

there is a forward march of the masses all one can say is that it is not Rizal that they left

behind, it is Constantino.

CE

The End of Veneration

Documents

Transcript of The End of Veneration