SOCIOLOGY SECTION: G.E.A.

S /RM 301

REACTION PAPER:
Heneral Luna
By: Yvonne Dominique Narido
Having watched the movie, Heneral Luna, made me think about our heroes who risked their lives and
fought for our freedom. If it was not for not their bravery, we wouldn’t be able to become a nation so it
extremely important to acknowledge their sacrifices and works that led the independence of our
country. In a way, the film also motivated me to know more about what occurred in the past. It made
me realize that the heroes are not just Rizal, Mabini, Bonifacio and others who we usually come across
in our history books. From this movie, we get to know that there are also some Filipinos who were a
significant character that battled for our freedom. The film represents the historic Philippine-American
war (1899-1902) where after the struggle of Filipinos to fight for their genuine independence, it
somehow went to waste as Spain and America had a secret agreement in which the country of the
Philippines was sold by Spain to America to be colonized once again. In the beginning of the film, it
already shows the continuous stream of American reinforcement had Filipinos rise suspicions of the
ultimate American intentions of full control and disposition of the cabinet of the Philippines. The film
also portrays, General Luna, who of all the Filipinos soldiers, best prepared to fight for freedom. Antonio
Luna was a fierce nationalistic commander who had unruly temper and pride that made men fear and
loathe which may have been the cause of his death by ganging up of the Kawit Company who were in
favour of Americans during that time so they assassinate Luna due to unwillingness to cooperate on
freeing the Philippines from American colonizers. Luna along with his men, fought alone against the
Americans as Emilio Aguinaldo, the president during that period, did not agree with his campaign to
recapture Manila and to fight against the Americans who were terrorizing the local population. The key
concept of this is the culture of the Filipinos where nationalism was illustrated during the Spanish-
American era. In the film, Heneral Luna, it also implicitly showed interesting things about our culture
such as how Filipinos follow orders regardless of anything which can be seen by how the Kawit Soldiers
refuses to obey General Luna’s proposal of reinforcements because the order did not come from the
President Aguinaldo so they just internalize the norms. Filipinos culture also portrays tendency of
indolent where Filipinos did not unite leading to miscarriage of the nation. Nevertheless, General
preserved his ideas and stood along with his loyal soldiers to embark journey to the American troops to
fight despite everyone’s against them.

‘’We could have had a birth of a nation, but instead we had a miscarriage of a nation”. – E.A. Rocha,
Producer and Writer of Heneral Luna.

It is also important to note down the influence of Americans on Filipinos. American influences on
Filipinos’ cultures, traditions, values and so forth can still be seen in the system of education, literature,
art, architecture, religion and so on. One example of the influenced of Americans to Filipino culture is
having colonial mentality in which it caused Philippines to not be able to progress economically because
of there are more imported goods than our own local goods consumed. The Philippines is unable to
preserve the culture because of being westernized and new norms being developed. As well as move
towards modernization because of how primitive still the agriculture that unable to extract natural
resources. The American’s invasion to the Philippines also results the English language to be more
favored by the government, elite and middle class than the national language.

In a nutshell, the American-Philippines war period has shown the culture and traditions that Filipinos
uphold in the past and continuously passed on generations to generations.