Propaganda Movement The Propaganda Movement was a literary and cultural organization formed in 1872 by Filipino migrs who

had settled in Europe. Composed of Filipino liberals exiled in 1872 and students attending Europe's universities, the organization aimed to increase Spanish awareness of the needs of its colony, the Philippines, and to propagate a closer relationship between the colony and Spain. Its prominent members included Jos Rizal, author of Noli Me Tangere (novel) and El Filibusterismo, Graciano Lpez Jaena, publisher of La Solidaridad, the movement's principal organ, Mariano Ponce, the organization's secretary and Marcelo H. del Pilar. In February 17, 1872, Fathers Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos and Jacinto Zamora, all Filipino priest, was executed by the Spanish colonizers on charges of subversion. The martyrdom of the three priests apparently helped to inspire the organization of the Propaganda Movement, which aimed to seek reforms and inform Spain of the abuses of its colonial government. The limited higher education in the colony was entirely under clerical direction, but by the 1880s many sons of wealthy Filipinos were sent to Europe to study. There, nationalism and a passion for reform blossomed in the liberal atmosphere. Out of this talented group of overseas Filipino students arose the so-called Propaganda Movement. On December 13, 1888 they established in Barcelona the La Solidaridad. Poetry and pamphleteering flourished. The president of La Solidaridad was Rizal's cousin, Galicano Apacible. Among the other officers were Graciano Lopez-Jaena, vice-president, and Mariano Ponce, treasurer. Rizal, in London at the time, was named Honorary President. Unfortunately, Apacible could not hold the wrangling reformists together. It took the prestige of Rizal and the political wisdom of del Pilar to unite the Filipinos in Spain and to coordinate their efforts. Jose Rizal was this movement's most brilliant figure and his writings had a wide impact in the Philippines. Del Pilar joined the Masonic Order in Spain in 1889, one of the first Filipinos initiated into the mysteries of Masonry in Europe. Specifically, the Propagandists aims were:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Representation of the Philippines in the Cortes Generales, the Spanish parliament; Secularization of the clergy; Legalization of Spanish and Filipino equality; Creation of a public school system independent of the friars; Abolition of the polo (labor service) and vandala (forced sale of local products to the government); Guarantee of basic freedoms of speech and association; Equal opportunity for Filipinos and Spanish to enter government service; Recognition of the Philippines as a province of Spain; Secularization of Philippine parishes;

10. Recognition of human rights.

Propaganda Movement Jose Rizal, Marcelo H. Del Pilar and Mariano Ponce comprised the main staff of La Solidaridad, official organ of the Philippine propaganda movement in Spain; they were called the Glorious Trinity of the Propaganda Movement.

The limited higher education in the colony was entirely under clerical direction, but by the 1880s many sons of wealthy Filipinos were sent to Europe to study. There, nationalism and a passion for reform blossomed in the liberal atmosphere.

Out of this talented group of overseas Filipino students arose the so-called Propaganda Movement. On Dec 13, 1888 they established in Barcelona the La Solidaridad. This movement called for the annexation of the Philippines, Filipino representation in the Spanish legislature, freedom of speech and the press, and Filipino equality before the law.

Rizal, Del Pilar and Ponce He co-founded Logia Revoluccion in Barcelona and revived Logia Solidaridad 53 when it floundered into stormy seas where he became its Worshipful Master and with Jose Rizal as Orator.

He was crowned 33 by the Gran Oriente Espanol. He spearheaded the secret organization of Masonic lodges in the Philippines as a means of strengthening the propaganda movement. Mariano Ponce also became a mason in Spain and became Secretary of Logia Revoluccion and Logia Solidaridad 53. He attained the rank of 33 mason under the auspices of the Gran Oriente Espaol.

Filipino nationalism

Filipino Nationalism is an upsurge of patriotic sentiments and nationalistic ideals in the Philippines of the 19th century that came consequently as a result of more than two centuries of Spanish rule and as an immediate outcome of the Filipino Propaganda Movement (mostly in Europe) from 1872 to 1892. It served as the backbone of the first nationalist revolution in Asia, the Philippine Revolution of 1896.[2] The Creole Age (1780s-1872) The term 'Filipino' in its earliest sense referred to Spaniards born in the Philippines or Insulares (Creoles) and from which Filipino Nationalism began. Traditionally, the Creoles had enjoyed various government and church positionscomposing mainly the majority of the government bureaucracy itself.[3] The decline of Galleon Trade between Manila and Acapulco and the growing sense of economic insecurity in the later years of the 18th century led the creole to turn their attention to agricultural production. Characterized mostly in Philippine history as corrupt bureaucrats, the Creole gradually changes from a very government-dependent class into capital-driven entrepreneurs. Their turning of attention towards guilded soil caused the rise of the large private haciendas. The earliest signs of Filipino Nationalism could be seen in the writings of Luis Rodriquez Varela, a Creole educated in liberal France and highly exposed to the romanticism of the age. Knighted under the Order of Carlos III, Varela was perhaps the only Philippine Creole who was actually part of European nobility. The court gazzette in Madrid announce that he was to become a Conde and from that point on proudly called himself 'Conde Filipino'. He championed the rights of Filipinos in the islands and slowly made the term applicable to anyone born in the Philippines. However, by 1823 he was deported together with other creoles (allegedly known as Hijos del Pais), after being associated with a Creole revolt in Manila led by the Mexican Creole Andres Novales. Varela would then retire from politics but his nationalism was carried on by another Creole Padre Pelaez, who campaigned for the rights of Filipino priests and pressed for secularization of Philippine parishes. The Latin American revolutions and decline of friar influence in Spain resulted in the increase of the regular clergy (friars) in the Philippines. Filipino priests were being replaced by Spanish friars and Pelaez demanded explanation as to the legality of replacing a secular with regularswhich is in contradiction to the Exponi nobis. Pelaez brought the case to the Vatican almost succeeded if not for an earthquake that cut his career short and the ideology would be carried by his more militant disciple, Jose Burgos. Burgos in turn died after the infamous Cavite Mutiny, which was pinned on Burgos as his attempt to start a Creole Revolution and make himself president or 'rey indio'. The death of Jose Burgos, and the other alleged conspirators Mariano Gomez and Jacinto Zamora, seemingly ended the entire creole movement in 1872. Governor-General Rafael de Izquierdo unleashed his reign of terror in order to prevent the spread of the creole ideologyFilipino nationalism.

Propaganda Movement But the creole affair was seen by the other natives as a simple family affairSpaniards born in Spain against Spaniards born the Philippines. The events of 1872 however invited the other colored section of the Ilustrado (intellectually enlightened class) to at least do something to preserve the creole ideals. Seeing the impossibility of a revolution against Izquierdo and the Governor-Generals brutal reign convinced the ilustrado to get out of the Philippines and continue propaganda in Europe. This massive propaganda upheaval from 1872 to 1892 is now known as the Propaganda Movement. Through their writings and orations, Marcelo H. del Pilar, Graciano Lopez Jaena and Jose Rizal sounded the trumpets of Filipino nationalism and brought it to the level of the masses. Rizals Noli me tangere and El filibusterismo rode the increasing anti-Spanish sentiments in the islands and was pushing the people towards revolution.[5] By July 1892, an ilustrado mass man in the name of Andres Bonifacio established a revolutionary party based on the Filipino nationalism that started with ' los hijos del pais'--Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan. Ideology turned into revolution and gave Asia its first anti-imperialist/nationalist revolution by the last week of August 1896.

Jos Rizal and the Propaganda Movement Philippines Table of Contents

Between 1872 and 1892, a national consciousness was growing among the Filipino migrs who had settled in Europe. In the freer atmosphere of Europe, these migrs--liberals exiled in 1872 and students attending European universities--formed the Propaganda Movement. Organized for literary and cultural purposes more than for political ends, the Propagandists, who included upper-class Filipinos from all the lowland Christian areas, strove to 'awaken the sleeping intellect of the Spaniard to the needs of our country' and to create a closer, more equal association of the islands and the motherland. Among their specific goals were representation of the Philippines in the Cortes, or Spanish parliament; secularization of the clergy; legalization of Spanish and Filipino equality; creation of a public school system independent of the friars; abolition of the polo (labor service) and vandala (forced sale of local products to the government); guarantee of basic freedoms of speech and association; and equal opportunity for Filipinos and Spanish to enter government service. The most outstanding Propagandist was Jos Rizal, a physician, scholar, scientist, and writer. Born in 1861 into a prosperous Chinese mestizo family in Laguna Province, he displayed great intelligence at an early age. After several years of medical study at the University of Santo Toms, he went to Spain in 1882 to finish his studies at the University of Madrid. During the decade that followed, Rizals career spanned two worlds: Among small communities of Filipino students in Madrid and other European cities, he became a leader and eloquent spokesman, and in the wider world of European science and scholarship--particularly in Germany--he formed close relationships with prominent natural and social scientists. The new discipline of anthropology was of special interest to him; he was committed to refuting the friars stereotypes of Filipino racial inferiority with scientific arguments. His greatest impact on the development of a Filipino national consciousness, however, was his publication of two novels--Noli Me Tangere (Touch me not) in 1886 and El Filibusterismo (The reign of greed) in 1891. Rizal drew on his personal experiences and depicted the conditions of Spanish rule in the islands, particularly the abuses of the friars. Although the friars had Rizals books banned, they were smuggled into the Philippines and rapidly gained a wide readership. Other important Propagandists included Graciano Lopez Jaena, a noted orator and pamphleteer who had left the islands for Spain in 1880 after the publication of his satirical short novel, Fray Botod (Brother Fatso), an unflattering portrait of a provincial friar. In 1889 he established a biweekly newspaper in Barcelona, La Solidaridad (Solidarity), which became the principal organ of the Propaganda Movement, having audiences both in Spain and in the islands. Its contributors included Rizal; Dr. Ferdinand Blumentritt, an Austrian geographer and ethnologist whom Rizal had met in Germany; and Marcelo del Pilar, a reformminded lawyer. Del Pilar was active in the antifriar movement in the islands until obliged to flee to Spain in 1888, where he became editor of La Solidaridad and assumed leadership of the Filipino community in Spain. In 1887 Rizal returned briefly to the islands, but because of the furor surrounding the appearance of Noli Me Tangere the previous year, he was advised by the governor to leave. He returned to Europe by way of Japan and North America to complete his second novel and an edition of Antonio de Morgas seventeenth-century work, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (History of the Philippine Islands). The latter project stemmed from an ethnological interest in the cultural connections between the peoples of the pre-Spanish Philippines and those of the larger Malay region (including modern Malaysia and Indonesia) and the closely related political objective of encouraging national pride. De Morga provided positive information about the islands early inhabitants, and reliable accounts of pre-Christian religion and social customs. After a stay in Europe and Hong Kong, Rizal returned to the Philippines in June 1892, partly because the Dominicans had evicted his father and sisters from the land they leased from the friars estate at Calamba, in Laguna Province. He also was convinced that the struggle for reform could no longer be conducted effectively from overseas. In July he established the Liga Filipina (Philippine League), designed to be a truly national, nonviolent organization. It was dissolved, however, following his arrest and exile to the remote town of Dapitan in northwestern Mindanao. The Propaganda Movement languished after Rizals arrest and the collapse of the Liga Filipina. La Solidaridad went out of business in November 1895, and in 1896 both del Pilar and Lopez Jaena died in Barcelona, worn down by poverty and disappointment. An attempt was made to reestablish the Liga Filipina, but the national movement had become split between ilustrado advocates of reform and peaceful evolution (the compromisarios, or compromisers) and a plebeian constituency that wanted revolution and national independence. Because the Spanish refused to allow genuine reform, the initiative quickly passed from the former group to the latter.

The Death of Gomburza & The Propaganda Movement

In February 17, 1872, Fathers Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos and Jocinto Zamora (Gomburza), all Filipino priest, was executed by the Spanish colonizers on charges of subversion. The charges against Fathers Gomez, Burgos and Zamora were their alleged complicity in the uprising of workers at the Cavite Naval Yard. The death of Gomburza awakened strong feelings of anger and resentment among the Filipinos. They

questioned Spanish authorities and demanded reforms. The martyrdom of the three priests apparently helped to inspire the organization of the Propaganda Movement, which aimed to seek reforms and inform Spain of the abuses of its colonial government. The illustrados led the Filipinos quest for reforms. Because of their education and newly acquired wealth, they felt more confident about voicing out popular grievances. However, since the illustrados themselves were a result of the changes that the Spanish government had been slowly implementing, the group could not really push very hard for the reforms it wanted. The illustrados did not succeed in easing the sufferings of the Filipinos; but from this group arose another faction called the intelligentsia. The intelligentsia also wanted reforms; but they were more systematic and used a peaceful means called the Propaganda Movement. Goals of the Propaganda Movement Members of the Propaganda Movement were called propagandists or reformists. They worked inside and outside the Philippines.

The Propaganda Movement never asked for Philippine independence because its members believed that once Spain realized the pitiful state of the country, the Spaniards would implement the changes the Filipinos were seeking. The Propagandists The Filipinos in Europe were much more active in seeking reforms than those in Manila. They could be divided into three groups: The first included Filipinos who had been exiled to the Marianas Islands in 1872 after being implicated in the Cavite Mutiny. After two many years in the Marianas, they proceeded to Madrid and Barcelona because they could no longer return

to the Philippines. The second group consisted of illustrados in the Philippines who had been sent to Europe for their education. The third group was composed of Filipinos who had fled their country to avoid punishment for a crime, or simply because they could not stand Spanish atrocities any longer. Still, not all Filipinos living in Spain were members of the Propaganda Movement. Jose Rizal, Graciano Lopez Jaena and Marcelo H. del Pilar were it most prominent members. Lopez Jaena was a brilliant orator who wrote such pieces as 'Fray Botod,' 'Esperanza,' and 'La Hija del Fraile,' which all criticized the abuses of Spanish friars in the Philippines. Del Pilar was an excellent writer and speaker who put up the newspaper Diarion Tagalog in 1882. His favorite topic was the friars. Some of his most popular writings included 'Caiingat Cayo', 'Dasalan at Tocsohan,' and 'Ang Sampung Kautusan ng mga Prayle'. 'Caingat Cayo' was a pamphlet answering the criticisms received by Jose Rizals novel Noli Me Tangere. 'Dasalan' was parody of the prayer books used by the Church, while 'Ang Sampung Kautusan' was a satirical take on the Ten Commandments, which highly ridiculed the Spanish friars. Jose Rizal was recognized as the great novelist of the Propaganda Movement. He was the first Filipino become famous for his written works. He wrote a poem entitled Sa Aking mga Kababata when he was only eight years old. His novels, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, clearly depicted the sufferings of the Filipinos and the rampant abuses committed by the friars in the colony. Because of his criticisms of the government and the friars, Rizal made a lot of enemies. He was executed at Bagumbayan (later renamed Luneta Park and now called Rizal Park) on December 30, 1896. The writings produced by the Propaganda Movement inspired Andres Bonifacio and other radicals to establish the Katipunan and set the Philippine Revolution in place.

This article is based on a talk given by the author to students and faculty of the University of London 's School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS) in September 1999. Translations of Filipino poems cited in this piece are all by the author.

Do not go gentle into that good night Rage, rage against the dying of the light Dylan Thomas

Those who are awake have a world in common, but every sleeper has a world of his own. Heraclitus

No todos dorman en la noche de nuestros abuelos Claro M Recto

These epigraphs have something in common: the theme of vigilance, wakefulness, and in the realm of literature, the social responsibility of the writer in a time of historical necessity.

The first, the two concluding lines from a villanelle of Dylan Thomas, has had an interesting history of allusion in Philippine writing. The poem was anything but political, a grieving son's exhortatory but pained message of encouragement to his dying father, whose blasphemous temper had died out long before he did, and which the poet would have wanted the father to retain with his last breath. But the lyrical apostrophe had the ring of transcending the personal, and the second line especially lent itself to an almost predictable appropriation as a clarion call, as it were, to some "higher" humanitarian cause. Thus, in the ominous days before the declaration of martial law, an editorial appeared in the Philippines Free Pressup to that time the most uncompromising proponent of adversarial journalism in the countryusing the words of Dylan Thomas, with an appropriate editorial cartoon by that estimable artist Esmeraldo Izon.

It is in this context and spiritthe well-founded warnings on the impending imposition of martial law seen as the twilight of freedom and democracy in the Philippines, and the determined response of many of the country's writers in doing battle with the regimethat I have done my own appropriation for the title of this piece.

The second is derived from the writings of a pre-Socratic Greek materialist. My first encounter with this statement was in Georg Lukacs' essay, "The Intellectual Physiognomy of Literary Characters", and I had occasion to quote this in a journal article "Metaphor as Social Reflection: The Poetics of Federico Licsi Espino Jr.", a poet whose works I shall refer to later in this discussion.

The third is attributed to the best-known nationalist statesman in Philippine history, Claro M. Recto, whose writings on the American domination of Philippine politics and society serve as a kind of bridge between the nationalist literature of the earlier periods and the activist literature of the 70s and up to the present, although critical literary writing on imperialism and neo-colonialism in recent times have been more influenced by the likes of Renato Constantino and Jose Ma. Sison.

The main discussion in this article is focused on literary works written during martial law, with only occasional references to literary-historical antecedents and what came after. The delimitation is necessary because protest literaturethe operative or generic phrase for our purposesand the literature about it comprise a continuum: full appreciation can only come with discussing the origins and rise of social realism during the last one hundred years, the foreign literary and ideological influences which helped shape a distinctive radical canon, the tradition of propaganda and revolutionary literature' against both Spanish and American colonizers from the 19 th century up to the Commonwealth period, and the permeating crisis of underdevelopment which informs Philippine post-colonialor what the Left would call neo-colonialhistory.

Protest literatureat other times, in other contexts, referred to as revolutionary literature, literature of engagement, combat literature, committed literature, literature of resistance, proletarian literature, people's literature, socially conscious literature, and perhaps a Philippine contribution to the taxonomy, the literature of circumvention (simply defined as "a body of works that expressed social and political protest in veiled terms") has had a long history in the Philippines.

Three periods of great social unrest which produced a more or less sustained body of protest literature may be identified as the following:

the latter part of Spanish rule in the late 19th century, and the first years of the American take-over in the 1900s;

the period covering the Philippine Commonwealth before World War 2 and the 1950s, during which peasant and worker issues began to gain pre-eminence, particularly with the introduction and spread of socialist thought and writing and the rise of social realism, and

 the decade of the late sixties and the early seventies, which saw the rise of radical student activism, and then throughout the fifteen-year period of martial law, in which the literature of circumvention and the literature of revolution sought to shake the superstructure of the New Society ordained by Ferdinand Marcos.

The declaration of martial law on September 21, 1972 temporarily put a damper on the resurgent and insurgent writing being done by writers who belonged to literary organizations which openly promoted progressive objectives: critique of social inequality, landlordism and peasant oppression, workers' rights and capitalist exploitation, etc. The issues that generated the polemics and poetics of the period were not confined to Filipino society: it was the height of the Vietnam War, and writerstogether with academics and students from Manila 's teeming universities demonstrated before the US Embassy as frequently as they massed in front of the Philippine Congress.

Several years before the onset of martial law, student activism became firmly rooted in the political landscape of the Philippines. Youth groups such as the Kabataang Makabayan and Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan, as well as other sectoral and mass organizations, were organized for political teach-ins and street demonstrations, and not a few writers were drawn into activist circles, publishing their essays and poems in campus newspapers like UP's Philippine Collegian and UE's Dawn, and alternative broadsheets such as Ang Masa, edited by the redoubtable Amado V. Hernandez, labor leader, pioneer of social realism in the Filipino novel, and poet who wrote his celebrated poems as a political prisoner in the 1950s. Manifestos distributed in the streets or plastered on walls captured the incendiary spirit of the times, the unequivocal partisanship of class struggle and class-consciousness, and sometimes, the flavor of literature.

Sometime in 1971, soon after the First Quarter Storm which saw students almost taking over the presidential palace after a series of fierce street battles in Manila, a writers' organization with a programmatic vision for social change came into being. This was the PAKSA (Panulat para sa Kaunlaran ng Sambayanan, 'literature for the people's advancement')whose literary and ideological influence continues to be felt up to the present, and has probably survived the splintering and oft-reported 'subsidence' of the Left in recent years.

The first years of Martial Law

Thousands of activists were thrown into prison after martial law was declared. Many writers were among those jailed, and those who escaped the dragnet were forced underground and got themselves integrated into units or cells which carried out clandestine publication of anti-regime books, booklets, pamphlets, newspapers. For the writers aboveground, or those who had also been critical about the regime but had not been tagged by the military establishment as dangerously subversive enough for arrest and detention, the problem of publishing outlets was most pronounced. Apart from newspapers, magazines had been closed down, for a number of them had printed some of the best protest literature being written before martial law. And then there was the censorship. As F. Sionil Jose recounts it:

The first instrument of censorship in 1972 was the Army Office of Civil Relations which granted licences for new magazines and newspapers. It also imposed guidelines which were often arbitrary. Under these guidelines, the President, his family, and the Armed Forces could not be criticized, only praised. Before any manuscript was published, it had to be examined by the Army censors. (Ong,1994:325)

He cites actual instances of censorship which he experienced first-hand as a publisher:

Bienvenido Santos' novel, The Praying Man, was banned outright because it portrayed a corrupt government official.A history book, The Propaganda Movement, by (the Jesuit scholar) John Schumacher almost failed to see print. The major who went over it objected to the title which, he said, was itself subversive.A play by Nina Estrada Puyat which was already in page proof for my journal Solidarity was banned outright; it portrayed what was happening in the country, the corruption which Marcos said he would banish in the New Society. (Ong, 1994:326)

On August 21, 1983, Benigno S. Aquino Jr.the most popular political opposition leader who was for many years in exile in the United States was gunned down as he climbed down a staircase of the jetliner that had brought him home. He had decided to come back to Manila to lead the political movement against Marcos rule, and was promptly assassinated by a group of conspirators whose ringleader or mastermind, up to this

time, has only been hinted at, but not yet officially unmasked. Never has a killing been more dramatically staged in the countrywith the possible execution of national hero Jose Rizal in 1896, thus the attempt at parallelism between the two eventsnever had there been as large a funeral and an outpouring of public grief for a public figure in Philippine history, and never has there been more copy written about the sensational assassination and its political aftermath.

Alice Guillermo reminisces on the impact of the event on Philippine literature in her essay "The Temper of the Times":

"A clear turning point for many writers and poets in English was the assassination of former Senator Benigno S. Aquino Jr. As a result of this incident, protestwhich had earlier been timid or diffusednow became full and orchestrated.the bourgeoisie of the Makati enclaves, including rich society matrons, took to the streets.in an unprecedented show of oppositionist fervor. Likewise, the visual arts and literature formed a swelling tide of protest centered around the figure of Aquino." (Ordoez, 1995:343)

Celebratory literature certainly abounded in the aftermath of the February or EDSA or People Power or Yellow Revolution. Since then, a lot of things have happened in the field of culture and literature in the Philippines. For one, literary competitions continue merrily, with the 1998 Centennial Literary Awards giving away prize money in the millions of pesos, rather than the pittance of a few thousands of the more established competitions, which is probably something to protest about. But on a more serious note: poetry and stories and novels continue to be published, plays continue to be performed, which partake of the nature of protest, though not on the same level of ideological intensity seen in the sixties and seventies, though in a large sense, the literature of resistance has not ceased to exist, precisely because so many issues remain unresolved under the present Philippine social formation. The insurgency persists, and revolutionary literature is still being produced, if only because there is still perception and acceptance in certain areas that the present social formation remains in the "semi-feudal, semi-colonial" mode. If proof be needed, the durable Ulos underground cultural-literary magazine continues to be published to this day, its national-democratic orientation undiminished, its socialist vision steadfast.

Beautiful Bird

In a little house I saw a young girl She was young in years I declared my love to her. I went before her She was beautiful like a star She set me on fire like a torch Without any pity. Beautiful bird With the beautiful figure Come near to my side I want to hear your voice The bird went flying My heart was weeping He left me waiting Without pity Pxaro dhermozura Por una caza chica, Vidi una hijica De aos era chicha Le declari amor. Sal delantre della Hermoza como lestrella Ya mencendi con teya Sin tener piadad. Pxaro dhermozura Linda la tu figura Acrcate al mi lado Te oyer la boz. El pxaro bolando Mi corasn llorando El me dex asperando Sin tener pidad.