Jose Rizal predicted that The Philippines would be a world power after independence

Jose Rizal had predicted that Las Islas Filipinas would be a world power after seceding from the Spanish Empire as a sovereign state and had reason to believe so.  The Philippine national hero was born in 1861 and grew up at a time that the Basco reforms and opening of the Philippines to world trade had made the Spanish colony an affluent society overnight.  Various regions of the Philippines were enjoying simultaneous booms in their respective crops: tobacco and indigo in the Ilocos, rice in the Central Plains, sugar in Pampanga, copra in Laguna and Bicolandia and sugar in the Visayas. The rapid swell of the boom may be seen in the indigo trade. This started from scratch in the mid-1780s, forstered by an Agustinian friar and Manila merchant. By 1786 it was shipping 140 quintals of indigo to Spain; only two years later, these shipments would double. Sugar was being exported at the rate of 30,000 piculs in the 1780s; shipments rose to 146,661 piculs in the 1840s, had quadrupled by the mid-century. Hemp exports swelled from 83,790 piculs in 1840 to 412,502 piculs in 1858. In 1859, Iloilo shipped 9,344 piculs of sugar abroad and 77,488 piculs to Manila. A decade later Iloilo sugar was being shipped at the rate of 170,000 piculs abroad and 80,000 piculs to Manila and exported 12 shiploads of rice to mainland Asia. Three years later Sual was exporting 60 shiploads of rice to mainland and sending 172 shiploads to Manila… Within the first decades of the 19th century, the value of Philippine exports jumped from PHP500,000 to PHP2,674,220 and the country’s population doubled (Nick Joaquin). 

The Philippine national hero had reason to believe that the Philippines would be a world power after independence from Spain.  But instead, his beloved country turned out to be the Sick Man of Asia, the laughing stock of the world.  So what went wrong?

Did Jose Rizal predict the Philippine Revolution of 1896?

Before we are able to answer the question, let us demystify a few ironies of what we know of our national hero.  Most Filipinos believe that Jose Rizal was for revolution and had predicted an armed and bloody rebellion against Spain and are dumbfounded to realize later that not only did the national hero criticize the 1896 Katipunan Revolt but also willingly enlisted in the Spanish Army to help crush the rebellion in Cuba.  And most Filipinos believe he was for revolution as his El Filibusterismo indicate.

It seems that Jose Rizal was for a revolution that had already been going in his time decades before 1896.  In Rizal's time, the creoles (European settlers in the Philippines or Kastilaloys in the modern sense) were becoming restive and were demanding liberty from Spain.  For centuries, the creoles had enjoyed some form of autonomy in the Philippines with Spain or Mexico kept distant by dangerous voyage by galleon.  The governor-gernal was the only Spaniard in the Philippines and was considered foreign.  The creoles not only enjoyed most government positions but ranks in the military as well.  However, with the opening of the Suez Canal, the distance that kept Spanish tyranny at bay was diminished.  Overnight, peninsulares took over colonial government, military and church positions.  Jose Rizal described this event in Noli Me Tangere wherein Teniente Guevarra told Don Juan Crisostomo (the Noli hero) how undesirable peninsulars began taking over government positions, an example which was the Spanish tax collector who could not even read or write, and whom the creole Don Rafael Ibarra (Crisostomo's father) had a row with ending in Don Rafael's imprisonment.  The creole disatisfaction with Spanish rule would lead to the Creole propaganda movements, the Novales revolt, the Cavite Mutiny of 1872 and GomBurZa.  Unforturnately, the creole revolution failed with the execution of GomBurza and imprisonment of notable creoles like Don Jacobo Zobel (forefather of the Ayalas), Joaquin Pardo de Tavera, the Regidors and more.  And it is this revolution that Jose Rizal wanted to revive and was referring to as El Filibusterismo.

Why was the Rizal hero a creole?

Another irony in Jose Rizal is that many historians have given him the pride of the Malay race, yet his hero in both books Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo was a creole.  Don Juan Crisostomo Ibarra, the Rizal hero, is a descendant of a brutal and cruel peninsular in the character of Don Pedro Eibarramendia, whose cruelty caused the sufferings of Elias the indio.  In El Filibusterismo, Simoun's Spanish ancestry must have been so obvious for him to pass as an Americano (then term for Latin Americans).  And it is Crisostomo the creole who becomes the revolutionary and not Elias the Indio.  What was Jose Rizal thinking?

Perhaps the answer is to whom Jose Rizal dedicated the El Filibusterismo, the three executed Filipino priests, two of whom are creoles - Jose Burgos and Jacinto Zamora.  The priests were executed in line with the Cavite Mutiny of 1872, led by the creole Seargent La Madrid.  Jose Rizal was identifying himself with the creoles and in line with their revolutionary activities.  The national hero was not predicting but writing about a national revolution (of the creoles) that had already been ongoing during his time.

Our Answer

At the time that Jose Rizal predicted the islands becoming a world power after independence, he was forseeing an independent Philippine Republic governed by the ideals of the creole, that is hispanization and modernization.  The Friars and Madrid had been against and blocked all paths to progress - the teaching of Spanish to the masses and encouraging the entry of modernity to the islands through immigration from Europe.

Today, Filipinos seem to do the opposite of what our national hero had prophesied for us by closing our borders to foreign capital, technology and at some point even tried to kill the English language in the country.

I am pretty sure as well that Jose Rizal didn't predict indio drivers of buses and tricycles to be the kings of the road or the indio generals to handle the August 23 hostage drama.


9.19.2010