Veneration without

Understanding
( Does Rizal deserve to be our national hero?)
By Renato Constantino
 The Role of Heroes

 history is made by men who confront the

problems of social progress and try to solve
them in accordance with the historical
conditions of their epoch. They set their
tasks in conformity with the given conditions
of their times.
 Innovation and Change

 Rizal lived in a period of great economic

changes. These were inevitably
accompanied by cultural and political
ferment. The country was undergoing
grave and deep alterations which
resulted in a national awakening.
 The English occupation of the country, the end of the
galleon trade, and the Latin-American revolutions of that
time were all factors which led to an economic re-thinking
by liberal Spanish officials. The establishment of non-
Hispanic commercial houses broke the insular belt.
European and American financing were vital agents in the
emerging export economy. Merchants gave crop advances
to indio and Chinese-mestizo cultivators resulting in
increased surpluses of agricultural export products.
 The Ideological Framework
 Economic prosperity spawned discontent
when the native beneficiaries saw a new
world of affluence opening for themselves
and their class. They attained a new
consciousness and hence, a new goal - that
of equality with the peninsulares - not in the
abstract, but in practical economic and
political terms.
 Hispanization and assimilation constituted the
ideological expression of the economic
motivations of affluent indios and mestizos.
Equality with the Spaniard meant equality of
opportunity. But they did not realize as yet that real
equality must be based on national freedom and
independence. They were still in the initial phases
of nationalist consciousness -a consciousness made
possible by the market situation of the time.
 Rizal, the ilustrado, fulfilled the function of voicing the
goals of his class and in the process he had to include the
aspirations of the entire people. Though the aims of this
class were limited to reformist measures, he expressed its
demands in terms of human liberty and human dignity and
thus encompassed the wider aspirations of all the people.
This is not to say that he was conscious that these were
class goals; rather, that typical of his class, he equated
class interest with people’s welfare. He did this in good
faith, unaware of any basic contradictions between the
two. He was the product of his society and as such could
be expected to voice only those aims that were within the
competence of his class.
 Rizal contributed much to the growth of national
consciousness
 As a social commentator, as the exposer of oppression, he
performed a remarkable task. His writings were part of the tradition
of protest which blossomed into revolution, into a separatist
movement. His original aim of elevating the indio to the level of
Hispanization of the peninsular so that the country could be
assimilated, could become a province of Spain, was transformed
into its opposite. Instead of making the Filipinos closer to Spain, the
propaganda gave root to separation. The drive for Hispanization
was transformed into the development of a distinct national
consciousness.
 The Concept of Filipino Nationhood
 The concept of Filipino nationhood is an important tool
of analysis as well as a conceptual weapon of struggle.
There are many Filipinos who do not realize they are
Filipinos only in the old cultural, racial sense. They are
not aware of the term Filipino as a developing concept.
Much less are they aware that today social conditions
demand that the true Filipino be one who is consciously
striving for de-colonization and independence.
 It is important to bear in mind that the term Filipino
originally referred to the creoles - the Spaniards born in
the Philippines - the Españoles-Filipinos or Filipinos, for
short. The natives were called indios. Spanish mestizos
who could pass off for white claimed to be creoles and
therefore Filipinos. Towards the last quarter of the 19th
century, Hispanized and urbanized indios along with
Spanish mestizos and sangley [Chinese - rly] mestizos
began to call themselves Filipinos, especially after the
abolition of the tribute lists in the 1880s and the economic
growth of the period
 The indios led by Rizal gained acceptability as Filipinos
because they proved their equality with the Spaniards in
terms of both culture and property. This was an important
stage in our appropriation of the term Filipino. Rizal’s
intellectual excellence paved the way for the winning of
the name for the natives of the land. It was an unconscious
struggle which led to a conscious recognition of the
pejorative meaning of indio. Thus, the winning of the term
Filipino was an anti-colonial victory for it signified the
recognition of racial equality between Spaniards and
Filipinos
 The “Limited” Filipinos

 For the users of the term were themselves limited Filipinos

based on education and property. Since this term was
applied to those who spoke in the name of the people but
were not really of the people, the next stage for this growing
concept should be the recognition of the masses as the real
nation and their transformation into real Filipinos. However,
the Filipino of today must undergo a process of de-
colonization before he can become a true Filipino. The de-
colonized Filipino is the real goal for our time just as the
Hispanized Filipino was once the goal of the reformists.
 Rizal, therefore, was an ilustrado hero whose life’s mission
corresponded in a general way to the wishes and aspirations of
the people. He died for his people, yet his repudiation of the
Revolution was an act against the people. There seems to be a
contradiction. He condemned the Revolution because as an
ilustrado he instinctively underestimated the power and the
talents of the people. He believed in freedom not so much as a
national right but as something to be deserved, like a medal for
good behavior. Moreover, he did not equate liberty with
independence
 Since his idea of liberty was essentially the
demand for those rights which the elite needed in
order to prosper economically. Rizal did not
consider political independence as a prerequisite to
freedom. Fearful of the violence of people’s action,
he did not want us to fight for our independence.
Rather, he wanted us to wait for the time when
Spain, acting in her own best interests, would
abandon us. He expressed himself clearly on these
points in the following passage from a letter which
he wrote in his cell on December 12, 1896,
 Yet the people revered him because, though
he was not with them, he died for certain
principles which they believed in. He was
their martyr; they recognized his labors
although they knew that he was already
behind them in their forward march.
 In line with their avowed policy of preparing us for
eventual self-government, the Americans projected
Rizal as the model of an educated citizen. His
name was invoked whenever the incapacity of the
masses for self-government was pointed out as a
justification for American tutelage. Rizal’s
preoccupation with education served to further the
impression that the majority of the Filipinos were
unlettered and therefore needed tutelage before
they could be ready for independence .
 A people have every right to be free. Tutelage in the art of
government as an excuse for colonialism is a discredited
alibi. People learn and educate themselves in the process
of struggling for freedom and liberty. They attain their
highest potential only when they are masters of their own
destiny. Colonialism is the only agency still trying to sell
the idea that freedom is a diploma to be granted by a
superior people to an inferior one after years of
apprenticeship
 The Precursors of Mendicancy
 In a way, Rizal and his generation were the precursors of the present-day
mendicants. It may be shocking to say that Rizal was one of the practitioners of a
mendicant policy, but the fact is that the propagandists, in working for certain
reforms, chose Spain as the arena of their struggle instead of working among their
own people, educating them and learning from them, helping them to realize their
own condition and articulating their aspirations. This reflects the bifurcation
between the educated and the masses.
 The elite had a sub-conscious disrespect for the ability of the people to articulate
their own demands and to move on their own. They felt that education gave them
the right to speak for the people. They proposed an elitist form of leadership, all
the while believing that what the elite leadership decided was what the people
would and should follow. They failed to realize that at critical moments of history
the people decide on their own, what they want and what they want to do.
 Ilustrados And Indios
 The contrast to the ilustrado approach was the Katipunan of
Bonifacio. Bonifacio, not as Hispanized as the ilustrados, saw in
people’s action the only road to liberation. The Katipunan, though of
masonic and of European inspiration, was people’s movement based
on confidence in the people’s capacity to act in its own behalf .
 The indio as Filipino rose in arms while the ilustrado was still
waiting for Spain to dispense justice and reforms. The ilustrado
Filipino was now being surpassed by the indio in revolutionary ardor.
The indio had a more legitimate claim to the title of Filipino because
he was truly liberating himself. The revolutionary masses proclaimed
their separatist goal through the Katipunan.
 We must see Rizal historically. Rizal should occupy his proper place in
our pantheon of great Filipinos. Though he is secure to be in our hearts
and memories as a hero, we must now realize that he has no monopoly of
patriotism; he is not the zenith of our greatness; neither are all his
teachings of universal and contemporary relevance and application. Just
as a given social system inevitably yields to new and higher forms of
social organization, so the individual hero in history gives way to new
and higher forms of heroism. Each hero’s contribution, however, are not
nullified thereby but assume their correct place in a particular stage of
the people’s development. Every nation is always discovering or
rediscovering heroes in the past or its present.
 Today, we need new heroes who can help us solve our
pressing problems. We cannot rely on Rizal alone. We
must discard the belief that we are incapable of
producing the heroes of our epoch, that heroes are
exceptional beings, accidents of history who stand
above the masses and apart from them. The true hero is
one with the masses: he does not exist above them. In
fact, a whole people can be heroes given the proper
motivation and articulation of their dreams.