What was Rizal’s vision?

Rizal’s vision was of the nation as an ethical community, a vision of an inclusive nation without borders, and not of a sovereign nation demarcated by a territory and protected by the armature of the state. He was convinced that the road to national liberation, to freedom and justice, was not via the violent seizure of state power—wherein today’s slaves become tomorrow’s tyrants.

The Historians…
• Agoncillo: Reformists were middle-class intellectuals called illustrados and the true revolutionaries were the masses. • Constantino: Accepts Agoncillo’s characterization. Furthermore, the illustrados provide the masses the ideology of European liberalism. • Ileto: texts of Rizal have 2 opposite and irreconcilable meanings– the elite’s modernist discourse on Rizal as the ‘liberal reformist’ and the peasants’ folk perception of Rizal as the “Tagalog Christ” • According to Quibuyen, the conflict between Rizal and del Pilar is not just a personality conflict. There were more profound political/ideological differences between Rizal and del Pilar, both illustrados, than between Rizal and Bonifacio. The periods and key events concerning Rizal’s political stand about separatism and the revolution. • 1861 – 1882: formative years– Calamba, Binan, Ateneo and the Jesuits, GOMBURZA, martyrdom, imprisonment of Teodora Alonzo, literary ventures, encounter with the guardia civil • 1882 – 1887:

European sojourn, enlightenment education, medical studies, patriotism, Noli Me Tangere • 1887 – 1888: the turning point – The Calamba Hacienda Case • 1888 – 1892: second sojourn—radicalization of Rizal; historical ethnological, linguistic studies, Los Indios Bravos, conflict within break with del Pilar and La Solidaridad, El Filibusterismo • 1892 – 1896: the moment of truth – Rizal and the Revolution. La Liga Filipina and the Katipunan, exile to Dapitan, arrest and martyrdom. • From 1887 to 1892, we can see the inconvertible evidence of a subversive Rizal. • Even before the Calamba incident, Rizal had expressed the view that independence through peaceful struggle was nothing but a dream and that seeking assimilation to Spain was a mistake. • A more radical Rizal can be seen after Rizal’s break with del Pilar and the La Solidaridad. • For del Pilar’s group, the sole problem to work on was the expulsion of the friars, but Rizal had come to realize that the root problem was the Spanish colonialism itself. For Rizal, the illustrados should work for the enlightenment of the Filipinos in the Philippines. • The Calamba tragedy led Rizal away from del Pilar’s assimilationist program. He then turned to the Philippines to start a more militant, more conciously nationalist movement, La Liga Filipina. The Calamba Hacienda Case

• Buecamino, removed himself as the legal counsel for the Rizal family, when he realized that Rizal had a more legal agenda in resisting the Dominicans, who after all were willing to come to the settlement but only with the ring leaders. • Buencamino narrated that Rizal was pushing the people to the brink of a revolution through the simple act of the tenants’ refusing to pay the friars’ canon for their supposed estate. December 30, 1891(Rizal’s letter to Blumentritt): Rizal’s disillusionment with Spain was complete. • The Calamba tragedy led Rizal to make a more radical separatist position in the second phase of his political career (1882 – 1892) • Rizal was viewed as the assimilationist and del Pilar the separatist, which was contrary to the fact.

RIZAL AND THE REVOLUTION
• Apacible: Rizal was not a separatist before he discovered the real situation in the Philippines but when he discovered everything, he had become a complete and wavering separatist. • Rizal was an antirevolutionary reformist and a deep loyal subject of Spain. • Zaide: Rizal supported the Revolution from the statements of Pio Valenzuela. • Manuel: Refuted the evidences of Zaide. Retana’s Collection all contradicting Pio.

• Rizal’s 12 December 1896 memorandum for his defense in his trial for treason before the Spanish Council of War “Defensa del Dr. Jose Rizal”; and the 15 December 1896 “Manifesto a Algunos Filipinos” • The final defense of Rizal’s lawyer, D. Luis Taviel de Andrade (“Documento Original de la Defensa de Rizal&rdquo read before the Council of War on 25 December 1896. • Dr. Pio Valenzuela’s declarations while prisoner of war, to Spanish authorities on 6 September 1896; and his subsequent addendum (“Ampliacion a la Declaracion Indigatoria que Tiene Prestada Pio Valenzuela&rdquo • Jose Dizon y Matanza’s testimony, while prisoner of war, to Spanish authorities, confirming Valenzuela’s 6 September testimony, Saan man mautas ay di kailangan

Cipres o laurel, lirio ma’y putungan
Pakikihamok at ang bibitayan
Yaon ay gaon din kung hiling ng Bayan
These crucial lines solve the double puzzle.
First, if Rizal is willing to support the revolution, why did he not join when it finally came? Second, what was the basis of the popular perception that he was the Tagalog Christ? Quibuyen: Confronted with the option between revolution and martyrdom, Rizal chose the later. False premise that Rizal was an assimilationist reformist who “vehemently repudiated” the revolution. American representation of Rizal as a counterrevolutionary bourgeois intellectual Filipino – whoever persecuted by the colonizer, regardless of the ethnicity. Rizal never equated Filipino with Hispanization. In Rizal’s mind, Filipino signifies the nation-in the-making A theme running through the Noli-Fili is that an oppressed people may be disunited and without a voice, but through enlightened struggle, it can become a nation

Batay sa mga talang ito galling sa aklat ni Quibuyen, masasabing si Rizal ay separatist, antirevolutionary at radikal.