RIZAL’S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF NON-VIOLENCE

Development of Rizal’s Politics of Nonviolence

• Jose Rizal was initially a Filipino Spaniard (español filipino). In the

“Memorandum” for his defense, Rizal (Guerrero 1974, 424; Alzona 1972a, 345)
said he merely sought the good of his native land, the Philippines (Filipinas),
just as the Catalan sought the good of Cataluña, the Basque the good of Vizcaya,
the Galician the good of Galicia, and the Andalucian the good of Andalucia. For
Rizal, the Philippines as a Spanish province should be treated as such and the
reformists should work for its cultural and political assimilation. The Philippines
was an acquired nation just as Cataluña, Vizcaya, Galicia, and Andalucia were
Castilian acquired regions. The Philippines, in other words, was for Rizal a patria
chica, that is to say, a nation within a larger nation (or Spain the patria grande),
just as Cataluña, Vizcaya, Galicia, and Andalucia were patrias chicas within the
Spanish nation.

• Rizal wanted reforms for his country. He wanted the Spaniards to treat the
Filipinos as their equals. He wanted the Philippines to have a representation in
the Spanish Cortes in order to expose the anomalies and abuses in the country
with the end in view of minimizing or completely eradicating them.

• He sought only autonomy— freedom and not independence, since he believed a

country could be independent without being free. He had always desired
democratic rights for the Philippines coupled with the unity of the Filipino people
through education. If perchance independence should come, it was because,
according to Rizal, the people deserved it and Mother Spain would willingly grant
them independence, especially when she was convinced that her future lay in
Morocco.

• Rizal observed that the natives dedicated themselves blindly to the salvation of
their own individual souls, tolerated political oppression and religious abuses,
allowed themselves to be exploited and humiliated, lacked sentiment of
nationhood, and pursued personal goals or interests.

• Rizal believed that the salvation of the Filipinos lay in influencing public opinion
in Spain to adopt reforms in the Philippines. A campaign must be waged in Spain
by a group of expatriates, i.e., full-blooded Filipinos, Filipino-Spanish and
Filipino-Chinese mestizos, and Spaniards born in the Philippines, to make the
peninsulares, or Spaniards born in Spain, aware of the true state of affairs in
the Philippines. Rizal’s primary mission when he (Palma 1949, 40, 42, 49) went
to Spain at the age of twenty-one was essentially political.

• Rizal’s political strategy in attempting to peacefully effect social change in his

country consisted in writing articles and letters to various magazines and
newspapers. He answered the attacks against the Filipinos and refuted the
undue praise given to the work of the friars of his country. On the whole the
Propaganda Movement failed in its mission of influencing public opinion
regarding the necessity of effecting reforms in the Philippines because of lack of
funds, Spain’s preoccupation with its own internal problems, the friars’ tentacles
 in Spain which opposed the reforms, and the expatriates’ quarrels (Agoncillo
1981, 153). Rizal had realized that the salvation of the Filipinos did not lie in
Spain but in the Philippines itself. He had already resolved the issue of
revolution in his second novel El filibusterismo, which came off the press in
1891.

• One year before the publication of the Fili, Rizal had already discovered the
foundation of freedom and independence. He believed it was intelligence (or
reason). In April 1890 he (Guerrero 1974, 287; Alzona 1963a, 446) wrote Marcelo
H. del Pilar: “I am assiduously studying the events in our country. I believe that
only intelligence can redeem us, in the material and in the spiritual. I still persist
in this belief.”

• The Filipinos must therefore be educated and enlightened. They must be taught
civic virtues. Enlightenment, in a nutshell, constituted one great theme of the
Fili. When he was tried of rebellion, Rizal incorporated these views in his defense.
Although he was a Filipino Spaniard prior to his death sentence or the man who
would accept independence only if Spain should grant it, he died a changed
man, one whose patience had run out and was ready to “advocate violent
means,” since he had seen that there was no hope but to seek war and the
Filipinos preferred to die than to endure their miseries.

• Rizal’s politics of nonviolence was conceived in the Philippines, hatched in

Spain, and nurtured back in the Philippines. His philosophy of nonviolence
likewise followed that pattern, except that it was hatched not so much in
peninsular Spain but in France, Belgium, and Germany where Rizal completed
and published his two novels.

• Man, in Rizal’s view (Majul 1967, 24; Alzona 1963b, 188), was a creation perfect
within his conditions. Man must be free to realize his natural tendency toward
the full development of his intellectual and moral potentialities. The attempt to
repress these potentialities would disfigure him. This is one sense of freedom,
which means full self-realization, that Rizal talked about. In this sense, man can
be held responsible for his actions. Since the government and the friars tried to
stifle the development of his mental and moral faculties, he must not therefore
be entirely blamed for his miserable condition. He must, however, be partly
blamed for tolerating and allowing such a condition to continue.

• Rizal believed a corrupt people could only produce a corrupt government. For as
long as man wallowed in ignorance, fanaticism, and moral depravity, it was
necessary to enlighten him. Education was the only course towards this goal.

• Rizal believed that education need not be formal. The home or an association
could do the function of enlightening the people. But he certainly would wish to
have formal education. In the Noli, he (Guerrero 1973, 205; Pascual 1962, 258)
argued through the provincial governor: . . . the school is the foundation of
society, the book in which is written the future of nations. Show us the
schools of a nation and we shall tell you what kind of a nation it is.
 A revolution, according to Rizal, was not therefore necessary. He had high hopes
that the Filipinos sooner or later would be enlightened, that is to say, would
have “personal discipline, intellectual integrity, and moral uplift,” coupled “with
a love of country and a refusal to submit to tyranny” (Majul 1967, 25). He
admitted that Filipino enlightenment might lead to a revolution, but it need not
be the case. In fact, he was more inclined to believe the latter. He said that we
should not blame anyone but ourselves since “our ills we owe to ourselves
alone.” If we “were less complaisant with tyranny and more disposed to struggle
and suffer for our rights,” Rizal (Derbyshire 1912, 360) argued, then “Spain
would be the first to grant us liberty.” When such liberty had been granted, Rizal
(Guerrero 1974, 425) was convinced that with unity and intellectual
enlightenment, the Filipino people would not fall into other foreign hands.

• Rizal had no recourse but to repudiate himself and to agree with Bonifacio on a
bloody revolution which certainly was an indication of the people’s
enlightenment or an indication of a people who preferred to die rather than to
endure their miseries. As Rizal (Alzona 1972b, 161) finally said, “I see tints on
the sky begin to show / And at last announce the day.” He knew that
independence or the redemption of the Fatherland was beginning to glow and
he was willing to offer his blood to dye its “matutinal glow.” He further knew that
sooner or later the revolution would succeed and he wished that Fatherland
would spread his blood when “the right moment” came. All these indicated that
Rizal deeply believed his martyrdom would help much in politically
enlightening the people in the same way that the martyrdom of three
Filipino secular priests (Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora)
had helped much in politically enlightening him.

THE PHILIPPINES A CENTURY HENCE

• The question then arises as to what had awakened the hearts and opened the minds
of the Filipino people with regards to their plight. Eventually, the natives realized that
such oppression in their society by foreign colonizers must no longer be tolerated. One
question Rizal raises in this essay is whether or not Spain can indeed prevent the
progress of the Philippines:

a. Keeping the people uneducated and ignorant had failed. National consciousness
had still awakened, and great Filipino minds still emerged from the rubble.
b. Keeping the people impoverished also came to no avail. On the contrary, living a
life of eternal destitution had allowed the Filipinos to act on the desire for a
change in their way of life. They began to explore other horizons through which
they could move towards progress.
c. Exterminating the people as an alternative to hindering progress did not work
either. The Filipino race was able to survive amidst wars and famine, and became
even more numerous after such catastrophes. To wipe out the nation altogether
would require the sacrifice of thousands of Spanish soldiers, and this is
something Spain would not allow.

• Spain, therefore, had no means to stop the progress of the country. What she needs to
do is to change her colonial policies so that they are in keeping with the needs of the
Philippine society and to the rising nationalism of the people.
 • What Rizal had envisioned in his essay came true. In 1898, the Americans wrestled
with Spain to win the Philippines, and eventually took over the country. Theirs was a
reign of democracy and liberty. Five decades after Rizal’s death, the Philippines gained
her long-awaited independence. This was in fulfillment of what he had written in his
essay: “History does not record in its annals any lasting domination by one people over
another, of different races, of diverse usages and customs, of opposite and divergent
ideas. One of the two had to yield and succumb.

Gripaldo, R. (2014). Rizal’s Philosophy of Nonviolence