The Liberal Hero of the Philippines: José Rizal

Despite all of their differences, the extreme-​right and extreme-​left are in agreement about one thing, their shared hatred for liberalism. Socialist and fascist critics alike decry liberalism as an empty, unprincipled philosophy of faux moderation peddled by the bourgeoise and big business to serve their own selfish ends. Both extremes of the political spectrum paint liberalism as an enforcer of the status quo while they are the true revolutionaries and radicals. But this could not be further from the truth. During the 18th and 19th centuries, advocates of liberalism led the charge against autocratic and theocratic governments across the globe. The example of the American and French Revolutions inspired countless men and women to fight for freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the separation of church and state, and the civil liberties that many of us today consider the default state of affairs. However, We only enjoy these rights today thanks to the struggles of those who fought for the freedom of unborn millions to come.

One of the many liberal-​minded people who fought for a better world during the age of revolutions was José Rizal, the polymath and polyglot who, through his heartfelt writing, inspired the budding nation of the Philipines to rise against their colonial oppressors. Though he died at the age of thirty-​five, during his life, José was an ophthalmologist, painter, sculptor, educator, historian, playwright, and journalist. His interests were varied and numerous, including architecture, cartography, economics, fencing, sleight of hand tricks, portraiture, anthropology, and a whole bunch more. If that wasn’t enough, he was fluent in twenty-​two languages, including Spanish, French, English, Greek, Malay, Japanese, Dutch, German, Italian, and even Arabic. He sounds like some sort of long-​running comic book character with an endless list of powers, but he was human; he simply squeezed every drop out of life while alive.

Despite sounding like the most eccentric gentleman of the 19th-​century, besides people who grew up in the Philipines who were mandated to read about José Rizal in school, Rizal remains an obscure name for most westerners. Even his considerable achievement of inspiring the first anti-​colonial revolution in Asia following the footsteps of the American and French Revolutions, in classical liberal and libertarian circles, José remains oddly obscure.

But I believe there is great value in knowing and appreciating the life of José Rizal. Today, postcolonial academics and thinkers often blame liberalism for the imperialism and colonial oppression unleashed by western nations. But as the scholar Pascal Bruckner rightly points out, “There is no doubt that Europe has given birth to monsters, but at the same time it has given birth to theories that make it possible to understand and destroy these monsters.” One of the greatest weapons against these monsters has been liberalism. Yes, the west created the colonial government that oppressed the Philipines, but people like José took ideas and principles from the west to combat their oppressors. However, José did not simply copy and paste western ideas. He applied them to a uniquely colonial context and came to profound conclusions on the nature of liberty and our responsibility to protect it at all costs.

José Rizal on June 19th, 1861, to a well-​off sugarcane planter family in the town of Calamba located in the province of Laguna nearby the capital of the Philippines, Manila. Young José had nine sisters and one brother. From an early age, it was evident that José had an insatiable appetite for knowledge. By the age of three, he had learned the alphabet from his mother and could read and write by the age of five. At first, José was educated by his mother, as was Filipino tradition. As José aged, a family friend León Monroy took over his education, tutoring him in reading and writing, Tagalog, the primary language of the Philippines, as well as Latin and Spanish. Upon Monroy’s death, José was sent to a private Latin school in Binan; however, it was quickly apparent that young José was well ahead of the curriculum.

José was a gifted young boy born into a privileged family, but this did not make his childhood carefree by any means. In 1871, before starting his high school education, his mother was falsely accused of a crime she did not commit. José’s uncle was having marriage trouble with his unfaithful wife. In an attempt to reconcile the two, José’s mother invited the pair to their family home to hash out their issues. The unfaithful wife collaborating with a local Spanish constabulary who had grievances against José’s family accused José’s mother of attempting to poison her food. As a result, José’s mother was imprisoned for two years until she was eventually exonerated by the supreme court and freed in 1873 but only after humiliating treatment while imprisoned. Later, José described the whole debacle as too unpleasant and heartbreaking for him ever to forget with his family name sullied.

The Spanish colonial government in the Philippines was rife with corruption, and seemingly every family had some terrible story of injustice similar to José’s. The Spanish began to colonize the Philipines in 1565. In fact, the archipelago derives its name from King Philip II. Through the strategy of divide and conquer, the Spanish eventually consolidated control over the isolated populations of the Philipines and brought them under unified Spanish rule. Since 1565, the Philipines had been governed from Mexico, then part of the Spanish empire. But after Spain officially recognized Mexican Independence in 1821, the governing of the Philipines was passed on to Madrid.

Before the 19th-​century, the Philipines, under Spanish rule, had been an isolated archipelago. Foreign merchants were not permitted to travel to the Philipines or engage in any form of trade. By 1814, the Spanish government abandoned their mercantilist for a more laissez-​faire approach, colonial ports were opened to foreign trade, and foreigners were allowed to enter and engage in business. By 1834, the port of Manila was opened to foreign businesses, and by 1858 15 foreign firms had quickly established themselves in the capital city. In 1869 the Suez Canal was opened. Formerly a trip from Barcelona to Manila would take anywhere from three to six months, but now it took a mere thirty or so days. The formerly isolated Philipines was becoming wealthier and more cosmopolitan thanks to the influx of foreign trade, and with trade came the exchange of ideas.

By the 19th-​century, Spain was becoming an increasingly liberal place influenced by the ideals of the French Revolution. In 1868, a military revolution overthrew the reign of Isabella II, and a constitution was promulgated by the Spanish government. Though the constitution did not apply to the Philipines, it emboldened Philipinos to advocate for equal rights alongside their Spanish counterparts. In 1869, Governor-​General Carlos Maria de La Torre arrived in the Philipines with an energetic approach to reform and relaxing press censorship. La Torre was widely applauded by those eager for change. However, political jockeying back in Spain caused La Torre to be dismissed and replaced with a more reactionary governor. Though in La Torre’s brief tenure, little had changed, it gave the Philipines a taste of a more free and fair government.

Despite an increasingly liberal government in Spain and the establishment of free trade in the Philipines, there was a major roadblock to any meaningful legal reform, the Spanish religious orders known as friars. As Spain became more liberal and at times more anti-​clerical, disaffected and reactionary friars fled their home country to the Philipines to reestablish the religious and socio-​economic status quo they had once maintained in Spain. In the Philipines, the friars held immense political and economic power. In Laguna, the home province of José friars owned 40% of the land, including the Rizal family estate. Local Filipino priests were given the poorest, most desolate provinces to administer, while the most prosperous were left for the Spanish friars. In many ways, the reactionary friars fleeing from an increasingly modern Spain wished to turn to the clock back and live as they had a century ago. Even when the Spanish government sent reformists to take positions in the colonial bureaucracy, without the support of the friars, they were incapable of governing, and the friars would not support anyone who threatened their lucrative position. Later in life, José would condemn the corrupt friars as a personification of everything he hated, “mean egoist, tyrant, oppressor, enemy of all progress and lover of everything feudal.”

In 1872, troops in the province of Cavite attempted a mutiny protesting against the New Governor-​General, who increased taxes. The uprising was swiftly put down but was then used as a pretext to arrest known liberals and reformers regardless of their involvement with the mutiny. José witnessed the public garrotting of three priests, one of whom José Burgos was a close friend of young José’s brother Paciano who had to leave his friar run university due to his association with Burgos. Though only a boy, the events of 1872 awakened José, he later wrote that he swore to “devote myself to avenge one day so many victims, and with this idea in mind I have been studying and this can be read in all my works and writings.”

As the government became increasingly oppressive, José began to attend the Jesuit-​run school Ateneo Municipal, one of the most esteemed schools in the colony. The Jesuit curriculum suited José’s broad tastes; he was trained in Latin, Greek, Spanish, rhetoric, history, religion, philosophy, and mathematics. But not all learning was in the classroom. There were also lessons in fencing, music, drawing, sculpture, and painting. Though the Jesuits were a strict lot, they also appreciated the energy and curiosity of youth, leading to José developing an affection for the Jesuits even later in life when he moved away from organized religion. José graduated from Ateneo De Manila in 1877 with the highest honors possible.

He advanced to the University of Santo Tomas, one of the oldest colleges in East Asia run by the Dominican friars. Though he initially studied arts after his mother’s eyesight degraded so much that she could no longer recognize him, José decided to study medicine. But José had no love for the Dominican friars who ran the college, whom he believed to be smug and condescending. One day while attending college, he walked past a Spanish lieutenant without saluting. In response, the lieutenant knocked him down and attacked him. José traveled to the palace of the governor-​general believing he had been unfairly attacked. José was denied an audience like many native Filipinos. During this same period, the Dominican friars who rented out land to José’s father began to increase their rent until it was doubled. With the friar’s stranglehold on land ownership and their influence in legal decisions, there was nothing his family could do but grin and bear the cost. José wrote that “in university, I got to understand better in what sort of world I was. In it there were privileges for some and rules for others.”

Increasingly unhappy with the oppressive environment of not only his education but his nation as a whole, José decided it was time to leave. His brother Paciano helped José arrange to continue studying medicine in Spain. In 1882, José departed from Manila aboard a steamship. En route, he stopped at Singapore, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Yemen, and Naples, eventually completing his journey in Madrid. After three years, he was awarded two licenses, one in medicine and another in philosophy and letters. Though a dedicated student of medicine, he always made sure he found time for his love of literature and the arts in general, receiving numerous awards for academic writing.

After graduating in 1885, José traveled to Germany to pursue studies in law. While traveling, he stopped in Barcelona and Paris, where he learned to speak German, French, and English while assisting in an ophthalmological office. When José arrived in Heidelberg, he met one of his greatest companions, Dr. Ferdninand Blumentritt, an Austrian orientalist. The pair became firm friends with Blumentritt helping guide José’s readings in history, anthropology, and linguistics while also introducing him to a myriad of academics interested in the Philippines.

While in Spain, José had suggested to fellow Filipino expatriates to write a communal work discussing the current state of the Philipines to help raise awareness of his countries colonial oppression. Sadly, there were few takers, and the project fell through. After reading Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, José was inspired to write a similar work, one which would portray the suffering of his people and hopefully spur conversations about reform. First and foremost, José wished to show that the Filipinos were not uncivilized savages. They were an educated and dignified people worthy of the rights all people deserve. By 1887, José had completed Noli me Tagore or in English touch me not. The story follows the character of Ibarra, a wealthy, educated Filipino who returns to his homeland after studying and traveling throughout Europe. While the plot is fabricated, much of the story takes inspiration from real-​life stories of injustice that unfold on a near-​daily basis due to the corruption maintained by the friars. Literary critics tend to disapprove of José’s long and sometimes ham-​fisted political speeches and sermons crammed into the character’s mouth. However, Noli is not only about politics but the culture, mores, and aspirations of the Filipino people, something most Europeans besides a few specialists would have any awareness of. José succeeded in both identifying the social cancers that plagued the Philipines while also writing a love letter to the homeland he missed so dearly. José explained that Noli was written for his country and to arouse the feelings of his countrymen. Noli contains no programmatic political plan. It merely outlines the problems facing the Philipines, leaving the reader to tackle the issue.

Upon its publishing in Berlin, the novel was immediately branded as subversive by the Spanish colonial government. Though censors tried their best, copies were smuggled into the Philipines. The colonial friars loathed the book with one report from José’s former university Santo Tomas condemning it as “heretical, impious and scandalous in the religious order, and antipatriotic, subversive of public order, offensive to the government of Spain and to its method of procedure in these Islands in the political order.” Anyone found possessing a copy was to be immediately jailed. Noli, being written in Spanish, could only be read by a small portion of the population, but the friar’s disdain brought José’s subversive novel to people’s attention.

After publishing Noli in 1887, José returned to his hometown in the Philippines, where he performed surgery on his mother’s cataracts restoring her eyesight again. Though he intended to live in peace, Noli had caused such a controversy that José received a constant stream of threats, and after six months, he was yet again forced to leave his oppressed homeland. Shortly after he left, government officials targeted his family confiscating their land deporting one of José’s brothers-​in-​law.

José traveled to Hong Kong, then to Japan, and eventually to America. He then settled in England from 1888 to 1889, where he began to write prolifically for the Spanish newspaper La Solidaridad, a paper committed to Enlightenment principles and progress, but above all else presenting the sufferings of the Filipino’s to Spanish legislators in the hope they would reform the broken and corrupt government of the Philippines. La Solidaridad’s goal was “To combat all reaction and all backward steps; to applaud and accept every liberal idea and to defend progress.”

Throughout his numerous articles in La Solidaridad, José championed individual rights, freedom of assembly and speech, and the rule of law. However, events at home were starting to make José question whether papers like La Solidaridad could ever make concrete changes. As long as the friars persisted, any liberal efforts at reform would be quickly subverted and derailed. He began to ponder the efficacy of educated itinerant’s advocacy. He argued that the best medicine should ideally be brought near the patient. Confiding to his friend Blumentritt through letters, José pondered returning home to sacrifice himself for his country.

In 1891, José published his sequel to Noli me Tangere, El Filibusterismo, or in English The Subversive. The story follows Ibarra’s plans to mount a revolt against the Spanish government by encouraging the corruption and oppression he opposes in the hopes it accelerates the government’s downfall and achieve revenge in the process. Fili is not a book that valorizes or romances revolution. Instead José seeks in the manner of a Socratic dialogue to discuss how a people can earn their liberty and independence. After all, José had observed in South America that a revolution could result in independence for a nation but not liberty for its people. José wanted both. Ibarra, consumed by hatred and vengeance, ultimately fails. As he dies, a Filipino priest Father Florentino undoubtedly based off his former Jesuit teachers, explains to Ibarra why his revolution failed saying:

“The glory of saving a country doesn’t mean having to use the measures that contributed to its ruin! You have believed that what crime and iniquity have stained and deformed, another crime and another iniquity can purify and redeem! That’s wrong! Hatred creates nothing but monsters. Only love can bring about wondrous things. Only virtue is redemptive. No, if someday our country can be free, it will not be by vice and crime, not by corruption of our children, by cheating some, and buying others. No, redemption sup- poses virtue, sacrifice, and sacrifice, love!” Florentino concludes that “the just and worthy have to suffer in order to spread their ideas and let them be known.” While increasingly seeing the possible necessity of a revolution, violence was something José deeply feared. He believed that experience of pain does not justify revolution but a positive vision of what will replace the pain inflicted on a populous. Being from a multi-​racial society, José did not want a nationalism based on blood or race but, in the same vein of the founding Fathers, a nationalism based on adherence to a liberal creed of rights, freedom, and independence. What José ultimately wanted was not reform or revolution but a republic that would stand the test of time.

After publishing El Filibusterismo, José left Europe and traveled to Hong Kong, where he practiced medicine while living with his family, who like many Filipino’s had found a comfortable place of exile in Hong Kong. José continued to write about the Filipino cause writing pamphlets and even translating the French Declaration of the Rights of Man.

The newly appointed governor-​general of the Philippines yet again promised reforms. Hoping for the best, José wrote to the governor-​general explaining his intentions to return to the Philippines. José returned in June of 1892 and quickly established the Liga Filipina, a peaceful movement for Filipino independence. José was quickly arrested without trial. For the offense of publishing books, articles, and pamphlets that criticized the Catholic Church and Spanish government, he was to be deported. The Liga Filipina was disbanded after his arrest, but an admirer of José Andrés Bonifacio gathered fellow supporters to establish the Katipunan, a secret revolutionary group dedicated to overthrowing the Spanish colonial government.

José was exiled to a small town in the Northwest known as Dapitan. Knowing political agitation would bring reprisals on his family, José dedicated himself to looking after establishing a small medical practice and school, even teaching some of the locals how to carve and sculpt in his spare time. The Spanish government had hoped that without a voice, José would fade into obscurity, but his efforts at improving the lives of those around him only bolstered his reputation. Though he began to tire of living in a poor rural town, José never made any attempts to escape, even though he could easily slip away at night. Though isolated in Dapitan, his lifelong friend Blumentritt kept José in touch with the various academics and professors he had encountered in Europe. The letters José received exhausted censors who constantly had to translate Dutch, French, German, and English letters.

As Andrés Bonifacio prepared for his upcoming revolution, he sent someone to José seeking his guidance and hopefully his support. José argued the Katipunan had limited financial and military resources. He advised that Andrés kept three main points in mind for his revolution. Firstly, collect as many weapons as possible for the upcoming conflict. Secondly, he advised that Andrés made sure that wealthy Filipinos aligned themselves with the revolution as they could potentially be powerful allies to the colonial government. Thirdly, if the revolutionaries’ plans were discovered, start the revolution immediately.

After four years in Dapitan, in 1885, José sent a letter to the governor-​general offering up his skill as a doctor for military service in Cuba. The governor happily invited him to join as a medical officer. As José boarded a boat heading towards Cuba, the Katipunan’s plans were uncovered, and the revolution began. When his ship reached Barcelona, José was arrested and brought back to Manila. For the entire voyage, José was unchained, and no one laid a hand on him. Though again he had chances to escape like Socrates facing his trial, he refused to run and hide.

Tried before a court-​martial, José was convicted for rebellion, sedition, and conspiracy, and he was sentenced to death, a punishment no doubt the friars gleefully advocated for. José was to be executed by a firing squad of Filipino soldiers in the Spanish army; behind them was another group of Spanish soldiers ordered to shoot any of the executioners who failed to obey their orders. José was executed on December 30th, 1896. José had spent years contemplating sacrificing his life for his country faced his death with Christ-​like composure; he knew that though it was his end from his death, something new would begin. Before his death, he sent a letter to his dear friend Blumentritt along with a book he bound himself. Upon receiving it, Blumentritt could not hold back his tears. Besides the most corrupt friars, the premature death of the lovable José, who had charmed and inspired people across Europe, Asia, and the Americas, was received with heavy hearts.

Though he took no part in the coming revolution, his books, articles, and most importantly, his example inspired countless Filipinos to take up arms for the cause of independence. As cheesy as old sayings are, often the pen is mightier than the sword, and José Rizal proved that ideas backed by both passion and principle could overcome the fear of brute force. Often idealists in writing fail to live up to their principles, but José did not fear death, he feared a world where freedom was not realized for all.

Today, the Philippines is ruled over by the murderous demagogue Duerte who said himself, “If it concern human rights, I don’t give a shit.” I could say the Philippines is long overdue to revive the liberal thoughts and sentiments of José Rizal but to be frank, in the current political climate, liberalism is under siege from all sides. Alt-​righters, Socialists, Catholic Integralists, and populists across the globe are doing their damnedest to attack liberalism, a philosophical movement that, while not without its faults and sins, liberalism has created a freer and more prosperous world on the whole. In José’s novel Noli me tangere, a wise man says to Ibarra, “After the storm is unleashed, perhaps some grain will germinate, survive the catastrophe, save the species from annihilation and serve thereafter as the seed for the children to sow later.” Though the reputation of liberalism may be in ruins, it is never too late to plant the seeds for a freer future.