2. Conquering the Lowly Conquistadores 

"The Philippines," you said, "will remain under Spanish domination, but with more law and greater liberty, or they will declare themselves independent after steeping themselves and the mother country in blood."

They¹⁴ did the latter, with neither hesitation nor compunction, for Spain would not heed your pleas for them to allowed to "enter upon the life of law and civilization" and to have their rights respected. The colonizers clearly answered in the affirmative the question that you used to end your essay: "Spain, must we someday tell Filipinas that thou hast no ear for her woes and that if she wishes to be saved, she must redeem herself?"

You wrote that the "petty insurrections" that had occur-red in the Philippines before your time failed since none of them "had a popular character or was based on a need of the whole people," and rhetorically warned with this question: "But what if the movement springs from the people themselves and based its causes upon their woes?" You had actually answered this point earlier in the same work by pointing out "a factor which was formerly lacking – the spirit of the nation has been aroused and a common misfortune, a common debasement has united all the inhabitants of the Islands."

Three years had not passed after you penned those lines when a secret society was founded by your plebeian friend (a member of your Liga) who was self-educated in literature from the French Revolution of a century before in writings from you and you and your colleagues in the earlier propaganda movements for Filipino dignity.¹⁵ The supreme and noble Katipunan of the finest sons and daughters of the country spread fast among the ordinary folk. The masses of Indios rallied around the blood-crimsoned banner of the armed struggle for national liberation and social emancipation, and carried it to victory you youself had cautioned they might not be able to attain.

Neither Andres Bonifacio and his barefooted Katipunan comrades, nor the more sophisticated leaders of the successor organizations of the Philippine Revolution of 1896, up to General Aguinaldo’s revolutionary government, could have rallied the people to fight an initially lopsided mortal contest with their colonizers of three long centuries had they not essentially and credibly voiced the people’s own "Katapusang Hibik" (final cry of anguish), and unmistakably represented the fervent hopes and aspirations of the masses for a future in the bliss of emancipation.

Even in the absence of exiled leaders who had negotiated surrender at Biak na Bato and despite Aguinaldo’s orders for them to lay down their arms or be regarded as plain bandits, the people carried on with practically no interruption until and after the Aguinaldo group returned to "resume" the struggle.¹⁶

Now leaders emerged from the ranks of the masses who kept at the enemy with spontaneous and almost simultaneous risings in different provinces, capturing Spanish garrisons in quick succession and freeing the peasantry from feudal and semi-feudal yoke. The movement for separation (national freedom) and against landlordism had indeed sprung from the people themselves, and it was flourishing and marching unmistakably towards victory, dislodging the rule of the Spanish Sword and Cross.

By the end of June 1898, they controlled virtually all of Luzon had laid a siege on Intramuros, the old capital city of Manila. Admiral Dewey later wrote in his autobiography the proof that it was Filipino effort and gallantry that defeated the Spanish forces, even isolating an American marine force at Cavite from Spanish attack and effectively preparing a foothold for American troops in anticipation of their arrival later on.

But the Spanish colonizers who jealously withheld from the Filipino the recognition of his dignity and denied his preparedness for his rightful place in the civilized world, proved incapable of honorably conceding defeat to the rightful victors. Spain thus proved to be a lowly conquistador despite the arrogance of her aristocratic obispos, frailes, ministros, gobernadores and guardias civil in your time, and despite the arrogance of those of their descendants who we now hear spouting Spanish or Spanish-sounding expletives among the "Indios" these sinverguenzas are still wont to condescend on.

Refusing to swallow the bitter gall of defeat in war at the hands of Indios they had considered their inferiors, the Spanish colonizers stooped even lower than the dark abyss of dishonesty by agreeing to surrender only to the largely-spectator but fellow-Caucasian army that had masqueraded as the rebels’ allies.

They even accepted $20 million in payment for territory already lost in battle. The appearances surrounding the deal, including a mock battle at the Bay, the machinations of the great American Republic," and the naiveté of the Aguinaldo leadership, facilitated and temporarily masked this despicable act of treachery.

______________________________

NOTES:

¹⁴I have since grown to prefer the pronouns "we" and "us" to refer to our people even of much earlier generations. Still I decide now not to change the third-person-plural pronoun used in this open letter because it remains more consistent with Rizal’s own choice of words and slides more smoothly with direct quotes from his original essay.

¹⁵Further research indicated Bonifacio also based much of his writings on indigenous wisdom. At the time I wrote this open letter and even afterwards, until I was preparing to write a book about Bonifacio, I had also thought that Bonifacio was mainly influenced by western writings. I was set aright by such authors as Virgilio S. Almario with his Panitikan ng Rebolusyon(g 1896) and Reynaldo Ileto with his Pasyón and Revolution.

¹⁶Dewey would have ignored Aguinaldo in Hongkong if struggle here had fizzled out after he left. Aguinaldo even said the people who would continue fighting the Spaniards would be plain bandits, before he shouted "Viva España!" and boarded the boat that would carry him and his small group to their exile in Hong Kong. The people defied his order to lay down their arms and instead continued fighting and weakening the Spanish forces wherever these were across the archipelago.

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