AN UNEXPECTED

REALIZATION AND
AN UNEXPECTED
TURN OF EVENTS
● Rizal’s low opinion of the expatriate youth in Spain
○ Their lack of seriousness & political commitment, fractiousness
and excessive individualism
● Transformed into indictment of the Filipino’s capacity for self-rule
● Also given up on reforms
○ Independence was the only goal left
○ Considered the termination of the colonial relationship between
the Philippines and Spain
● Imperative for the Philippines to become a viable civic community
LA LIGA FILIPINA
La Liga Filipina
● June 26 1892 - Rizal met a varied group of in the house of
Doroteo Ongjunco, a freemason
○ Inauguration of the La Liga Filipina
■ 30 people were present—a mélange of Filipino
intellectuals, businessmen and property owners,
and future revolutionaries
● Die abruptly within 4 days with Rizal’s arrest and exile
● Rizal may have envisioned it to be an economic civic
association
● Motto: Unus instar omnium (one is
equal to all)
● Compact, vigorous, homogenous
civil society arising from a
federation of associations all based
on the principle of mutualism and
animated with a national sentiment;
and its preferred form of state
RIZAL:
purposes of the Liga were union, encouragement of
commerce, industry, etc., because I understood and I
understand that a people cannot have liberties without
having first material prosperity; that to have liberties without
having food to eat is to listen to speeches and to fast
 ● To unite the whole
archipelago
● Mutual protection in case of
trouble and need
Defense against every
Aims of the La Liga
●
violence and injustice

Filipina ● Development of education,

agriculture, and commerce
● Study and implementation of
reforms
● Debated to be:
○ The bridge to the Katipunan (O.D. Corpuz)
■ Society would rest on a popular base, made up of people’s councils,
organized by pueblos or districts
○ Liga’s intentions were less radical (Austin Coates)
■ a continuation of the peaceful methods of seeking reforms that were
started by the Propaganda movement and the La Solidaridad
○ A revolutionary association (Leon Ma. Guerrero)
■ Structure revealed itself to an imperium in imperio
(quasi-government)
○
Cesar Adib Majul

● Conceived by him as a means to establish an alternative political “order”

that would parallel and eventually compete with both the colonial &
ecclesiastical orders established by the Spaniards
● An attempt to provide moral basis for revolution
○ Right of revolution - based on the national community or society as a
sanction
● Fundamental Aim: Prepare habits among the people that would
eventually weld them more and more into that national community
● Was Rizal’s first attempt to foster institutional change in both the
economic and political spheres
○ Primary Aim: Make the country rich

○ Secondary Aim: Lead to revolution

● Believed that change in institutions would pave the way for economic

advancement and by it the Philippines could attain and be worthy of

her liberties

● Designed of instilling habits and dispositions in its members

● Members were expected to subordinate all personal interests to
the collective good of the organization
● What Rizal wanted was to relate the common life of the
association to the individual
● The only guarantee against tyranny is the alignment of the
individual wills of the members toward the collective pursuit of the
common good
RIZAL:
Let them show the statutes of the Liga and it will be seen
that what I was pursuing were union, commercial and
industrial development and the like. That these things—union
and money— after years could prepare for a revolution, I
don’t have to deny; but they could also prevent all revolutions,
because people who live comfortably and have money do not
go for adventures.
Rizal’s reforms
● From old theme demands of representation in the Cortes, equality of
rights and administrative reforms
○ To building the civic structures and institutions in the event of
Philippine independence
○ To ensure that Filipinos became capable of governing themselves
effectively
● He desired:
○ Democratic elections, economic liberty, and a well functioning rule of
law
Political thought basis
● Rousseau’s concept of social contract
○ Instrumentality for resignation of the free will of the individual in order to form popular
sovereignty.
○ Each of us places his person and authority under the supreme direction of the general
will, and that the group receives each individual as an indivisible part of the whole
● Proudhon's concept of contrat social
○ The social contract is an agreement of man with man which must result society
○ Man and man declare themselves essentially producers, and abdicate all pretension to
govern each other
○ Each citizen pledges to the association his love, his intelligence, his work, his services, his
goods, in return for the affection, ideas, labor, products, services and good of his fellows
○ The measure of the right of each being determined by the importance of his
contributions, and the recovery that can be demanded in proportion to his deliveries
RETURN TO THE PHILIPPINES
FROM HONG KONG
● Rizal’s family sailed to Hong Kong so he would not have to return to
the PH to meet them
○ Opened a clinic but it didn’t last 8 months
○ June 1982 - on a ship bound for Manila
● Letters to Dr Lorenzo Marques with instructions to open them only in
the case of his death
○ “dear parents, brother & sisters, and friends”
○ “Filipinos”
The First Letter
● Reason: a duty imposed by love
○ to be consistent with what he has written
● To duty as the motivation for death + Own convictions for the state and
future of his homeland
○ greater motivation was the justice and peace for his family & friends
● Rizal in mid-1892 was a sad man
○ Professed to see the future but admits it looks obscure
Second Letter
● Filipinos have been those relying on him and his work to bring about
change
● Recognizes the obligations he has VS only way to stop the persecution of
innocents was to give himself up
● Awareness of the sufferings but also the fact that others can replace him
in the fight for the country
● wishes to demonstrate that all Filipinos know how to die out of duty and
for their conviction
● Conflict between the call of country and the demands of family
○ resolves in favor of family; his decisions a moral obligation
○ demands of morality prevail over the demands of the country
● Question of virtue
○ conditio sine qua non of redemption of the country
○ it crystallizes the fulfillment of duty
○ no conflict between his love of country and readiness to die for his
family
● Persecution of his family was a consequence of his political activities
○ Surrendering out of love, but to be executed for his political ideas
● Importance of heroism
○ Death was an opportunity to sow an idea
○ Sacrifice presupposes love
○ Justice and peace are higher values than the nation
○ Transforming his would be death into a sacrifice
● Three conditions Padre FLorentino lists for the Philippines’
redemption
○ love, sacrifice, virtue
● Struggle for justice in society is something that ought to be carried on by
the whole nation
○ anti-Messianic complex
○ no one not even Rizal was indispensable
● The patria was riven by divisions, inrigues & deceptions
○ The nation a dream
○ to give himself up = it was real
● Every life given up is a reassurance to the people that the nation is not
fiction
○ to love what is just, what is good and what is great to the point of
dying for; to deserve a just and peaceful country
EXAMINED LIFE IN DAPITAN
● 4 years 13 days, and a few odd hours
● 1st year
○ practiced as an eye doctor and treated poor patients for free
● 1893 - giving classes to a small group of boys (children of the best
families)
○ without pay but in return the boys willingly helped on his farm
● Middle of 1894
○ Trying to teach the poor to make a better living
○ introduced better fishing nets
○ organized the farmers into a cooperative to free them from Chinese
middlemen
● Dapitan benefited
○ spent money on street lamps for the town
○ made a relief map of Mindanao in the plaza
○ drained swamps to reduce malaria
○ 1894 - built a reservoir to which an aqueduct brought water
● Rizal led an ordinary citizen’s life with his fruit trees and chickens
○ bought hemp and shipped it to Manila
○ his services to the poor and projects for the town of Dapitan
○ citizenship, being & acting as part of a community, living solidarity
● Dedicated to the education of his 16-20 boys
○ taught subjects (history, english, spanish, arithmetic)
○ study nature aka plants and animals
○ developed his students’ minds and virtues
● Hymn to Talisay
○ Goal & strategy: wishes to form the minds of his students + souls
through their bodies
○ Three values: bravery, toughness, daring
○ Part of the virtue of fortitude which was sorely lacking in the Filipino
Mi Retiro
● Is Rizal’s meditation on his life up to that date and includes his most
intimate thoughts on nationhood and citizenship
● Rizal is confronted by accusations and slurs on his reputation; examining
whether he was indeed guilty or not.
● Object of Rizal’s faith = object of his hope
○ “The Idea”
○ “Sowing ideas” - transformation of suffering and death from brute
facts to luminous seeds
■ honor and justice are of greater value than human life, that they
are worth of dying for
● Brute force: Fear of suffering & Fear of death
STRUGGLE WITH THE FORCES OF HISTORY
● Last two months of Rizal’s life in Fort Santiago, Manila
● 09/03, Cuba -> 10/03 Barcelona -> 10/06 Return to the Philippines
○ Arrived on November 3
● By the time Rizal was writing El Fili:
○ No longer a loyal reformer advocating for gradual & peaceful political
emancipation of the Philippines Convinced that immediate
independence would only mean the rise of tyranny with a Filipino
face
● Revolution came anyway
● Guerrero: A “reluctant revolutionary”
○ embracing revolution = flexible accommodation to the realities of the
situation
○ little to expect from Spain as from his own countrymen
● La Liga Filipina - creation of a nation understood as a civic community
● December 12 1896
○ wrote down information for the use of his defense counsel
● Arrested in connection with the armed revolt of Andres Bonifacio’s
Katipunan
○ which erupted at the end of August 1896
● Addressed the issues raised against him, clarifying matters being
muddled
○ Key issue: his alleged involvement in the revolution
● Authorities believed this was part of a separatist plot directed by Rizal
through the La Liga Filipina
Rizal’s Defense
● The organization was stillborn, insisting nothing seditious
○ Not aiming to secure the independence through armed means
● Tried to merely lay the basis for the unity of the Filipinos and their
material prosperity
● La Liga - preparation of the PH becoming independent by force of
circumstance
● Attempt to bring into existence a people’s collective will that would make
independence a political inevitability
● Creating a nation was the conditio sine qua non for genuine emancipation
● The political cohesion Rizal wishes to achieve can be used:
○ Means to ensure that independence would not lead to the rise of
tyranny
○ Means to force Spain to grant independence
● Rizal was pursuing political union, and commercial and industrial
development
● Shifted the onus of responsibility to the Spaniards:
○ there had been many uprisings in the Philippines
○ He was singled out for his role in frankly & openly expressing to the
government the grievances of the people
■ “separatist ideas are not mine; rather I am their effect”
● Opposed Bonifacio’s armed revolt because he could not see how an
uprising could bring about a free, modern society
○ did not want separation but neither did he want the colonial
relationship with Spain to continue