SUYU, FRANCES MARIE B.

BSRT 1A

The Philippines a century Hence

Summary
Rizal analyzes the causes of the miseries experienced by the people. In this
essay, he forecast what the future holds hundred years later since Spanish
oppression.
When Spaniard came and colonized the country, the Filipinos lost their
ancient traditions, their recollections, they forgot their writings, their songs, their
poetry and their laws in order to learn by heart other doctrines, which they did not
understand, other ethics, other tastes, different from those inspired in their race by
their climate and their way of thinking. Their whole being has been degraded to
the point that they are already disgusted with themselves. They start to worship or
regard white men as superiors and imitate their culture.
The Philippine people have remained faithful during three centuries, giving
up their liberty and their independence, sometimes dazzled by the hope of the
Paradise promised, sometimes cajoled by the friendship offered them by noble and
generous people like the Spanish. Filipinos then submit themselves to the
foreigners because of the use of force.
Due to military policies, a great decrease in the number of the natives has
also occurred. Poverty became more rampant and that there is neglection in family.
Eventually, there was a time where natives can no longer tolerate the brutality or
severity of the circumstances that they are facing on the hands of the colonizers.
Rizal raised a question whether or not the Spain can prevent the progress of
the Philippines. The colonizers tried to keep the people uneducated and ignorant
and yet there are numerous enlightened class that exists within and without the
island, a class created and continually augmented by the stupidity of certain
governing powers, which forces the inhabitants to leave the country, to secure
education abroad, and it is maintained thanks to provocation and the system of
espionage in vogue. Spain also trend a method of extermination bound with their
strict rules against those who are suspicious as a mean to hinder progress but the
race of Filipino was able to survive against poverty, famine and many was and still
be able to become numerous after those events. Spain therefore cannot stop the
progress of the country.
Said on Rizal’s essay, very likely the Philippines will defend with inexpressible
valor the liberty secured at the price of so much blood and sacrifice. With the new
SUYU, FRANCES MARIE B. BSRT 1A

men that will spring from their soil and recollection of their past, they will perhaps
strife to enter freely upon the wide road of progress and all will labor together to
strengthen their fatherhood, both internally and externally. He also said that
perhaps the country will be once more free, and will recover the pristine virtues
that are gradually dying out and will again become addicted to peace – cheerful,
happy, joyous, hospitable and daring.

Reflection

If the Spaniards thought of us as being barbaric and have but little capacity
and have colonized us for the means of putting us into their captivity and restrain
us from progressing, I think that it was a complete display of cowardly on their
part. It would take a lot of sacrifices and force for them to stop us from
progressing. A price that they cannot pay. Like what Rizal said on his essay, if they
somehow want to stop and wipe out the nation all together would require a
sacrifice of a fourth of its population, and this is something the Spain would not do.
Any angle to look, Spain had no means to stop us from evolving and progressing
for the betterment of our life as Filipinos. What the Spain needs to do is to change
its policies and give us equal rights as to what they give to their own subjects in
turn to give rise to the spirit of the people.
Rizal envisions the Philippines to have liberty and democracy. Five decades
after his death, the Philippines gained independence. This event serves as a
fulfillment to what he wrote on his essay saying: “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”. He also stated that the existence of a foreign body within
another endowed with strength and activity is contrary to all natural and ethical
laws. Science teaches us that it is either assimilated, destroys the organism, is
eliminated or becomes encysted. Lucky in our pat that we have survived against
that foreign body and have thrive after the sufferings that we have experienced.
Indeed! We are a strong nation after all.