THE following appeared in the 2nd anniversary issue of Today Newspaper, January, 1996
The first of the Centennial years is upon us. And with its onset, we may be assured of
spectacle after spectacle which will prove only one thing: that, in our Centennial
celebrations, we are undertaking a secular Jubilee, a State-sanctioned Holy Year, an
annus mirabilis in which the mirabilis will consist of a sudden burgeoning among the
Filipino people, of nationalism, love of country, respect for the past and appreciation
of our heroes: Faith, Hope, and Charity; the Three Theological Virtues in Republican
form.
For if the Catholic reader were to list the Four Canonical Virtues, the Seven Gifts
of the Holy Spirit, the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy (and the Seven Spiritual ones),
and were to throw in The Seven Capital Sins and their Opposite Virtues, he would find
all of these things manifesting themselves in some, or all, of the projects that will
be undertaken during the National Centennial. A fact which should also be of interest
to his Masonic countryman, for here would be concrete proof that the Revolution,
motivated by Reason, inspired by the Enlightenment, devoted to the extirpation of
Obscurantism, has given birth, not to a fair daughter named Free Filipinas, but to a
changeling! One brought up in an atmosphere of a New Obscurantism, a daughter
clutching talismans, keening before the shrines of a multitude of (oh yes, secular!)
saints, reciting the sort of mumbo-jumbo which those who fought the Revolution and
defended the First Republic despised in their lifetimes.
We will witness competing processions by those devoted to this new cult of saints,
without, however, the catholicity which enables their religious brethren to walk up
aisles on their knees, or offer baskets of eggs for fertility, or wipe the dust off
statues, without being molested by those devoted to other cults.
If any sort of cultism was dreamt of by the Propagandists, and their successors who
chose to stand up and fight, it was the Cult of Reason. Secular, yes, but not, mind
you, atheistic; rather, Deist: similar to that held by the French during their
Revolution, perhaps ( but not with the ludicrousness of things like "The Fete of the
Supreme Being," with citoyens, and children with violets in their hair, frolicking
around the altar of the nation, surmounted by the tree of liberty); if a free state
had been born of the Revolution, we might have had a church transformed into a hero's
Pantheon, as the French did, in Paris. We would have had our cults, yes: you see it
coming when you read Aguinaldo's inaugural speech at Malolos, where he invokes:
"Illustrious spirits of Rizal, of Lopez Jaena, of Marcelo Hilario del Pilar! August
shades of Burgos, Pelaez, and Panganiban! Warlike geniuses of [Crispulo] Aguinaldo
and Tirona, of Natividad and Evangelista..."
We would have had all these people enshrined in our own Pantheon; notice, too, the
absence of one name: Bonifacio. We would have had a Pantheon in which the heroes
enshrined in it would have been chosen selectively, as well. But that is another
story (a sordid one which continues to inspire the grinding of historical axes to
this day); the important thing is that, while the creation of a gallery full of the
statues of heroes would have been inevitable, it would have been a place different
from the Pantheon that exists today.
Our Pantheon -the one established by a State rather uncomfortable about its own
origins, which owes little to the Revolution, and which is, then, by implication,
somewhat in the position of a child adopted into a noble family with a long tradition
of greatness, retains the classical pillars of an institution of the Enlightenment.
But as you enter it, a remarkable transformation unfold before you: from its portals
hearkening to Republican Rome, the building is transformed into a temple in the manner
of the Greeks, with their Olympian deities, until finally, at its very heart, you find
an altar, on which reposes the trinkets of the worship of the saints.
A confusing image indeed: but not as confusing as answering the question of what it is,
exactly, we mean when we speak of our heroes, or of honoring what it is (and what is
that, exactly, anyway?) they stood for. I have said before, that for a people
supposedly devoted to the Republican Principles of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity -
the Trinity worshipped by patriotic Filipinos since the time of the Propagandists -
we demonstrate a feverish devotion to their opposites.
We proclaim Liberty, but we are members of factions that would not give the individual
the liberty to decide, for himself, whom he shall consider a hero, whom he will take up
as a model for the edification of his life. The Magisterium of the State, the successor
of the Revolutionary Apostles (or, according to others, the successor of those who
martyred those apostles) alone in awe-full majesty, can determine who shall be
remembered as great. The Magisterium , the Republic, as guardian of Secular Faith
and Morals (and need one ask just how well it has fulfilled this task? you only have
to look among the looted remains of our nation's revolutionary documents!) alone says
who will be honored, and in what measure. It determines what facts will be drummed
into the little heads of the future faithful. It determines what events, and what
personalities, which deeds, are worthy of remembrance and passing on to generations
unborn. All else, all other means of telling the story, all other ways of assessing
our revolutionary legacy, is heresy.
We proclaim equality, but we are obsessed with -and how often must this be repeated
for it to sink in?- with establishing hierarchies among the dead and great. You would
think that the absurdity of it all, the fierce clambering up upon our fellow citizens,
the hate-filled clawing of others who do not agree with our views, which characterizes
even the best among us, as we try to establish a hierarchy (and is that word in itself
not odious, in terms of the writings of men like Rizal and Mabini?) among our heroes,
would strike us after a while. But it hasn't. A hierarchy of nobility, now isn't that
a twisted phrase! Men and women with clashing temperaments and quite different gifts,
held up to one set of criteria by which not only their achievements (in far-different
spheres, mind you), but their very worth will be judged, by people with their own
petty interests in mind! we might as well be in a Byzantine court, joining in
factions jockeying for preferment.
Or we might as well be like the ancient Greeks -and not even at their noblest, at
that, but in their moments of superstition. With Rizal as our Zeus, lording it over
the others, with Bonifacio as our Ares, Mabini, in drag, as an incongruous Athena
(or, simply because that god was lame, as Hephaestus!), Antonio Luna as Poseidon,
Gregorio del Pilar as Hermes. And Aguinaldo? Haven't some been attempting to portray
him as Hades incarnate?
In truth, though, this is exactly what has happened. Or happened, in the early days
when we began to build our Pantheon under the supervision of the Americans. What we
have done with this structure -for, having preserved, you might say, the classical
portico of the revolution, and having embellished the interior in the manner of the
pagan Greeks, now finds fulfillment by the completion of the Holy-of-Holies, by us,
who now consider ourselves free. And in building this Holy-of-Holies, with its altar
and the trinkets of the "Frailocracy", we have also turned our backs on the last
member of our Revolutionary Trinity: Fraternity.
We, who consider it beneath the dignity of our heroes to consider them equals, as is
right and fitting in a Republic and a Democracy (what, you ask? When were we ever
really a republic, and a democracy -ah, cynical reader!), will not treat our fellow
citizens as brothers, either. Christians or not, we follow the same biblical
injunction - and from the Old Testament, at that, for if our God-saints are not, we
will be jealous for them. Our behavior echoes the words of William Woods:
"If you wanted to know what evil was, or diabolism, for the Jews it meant disobedience
to the will of God. The devil was heresy, a subverter, not of goodness (that was the
Greek idea), but of truth, of the perfect, the inevitable. For it is only when one
can be certain of the truth (as the Jews were certain) that heresy not only exists,
but becomes diabolical. 'If thy brother... or the son of thy daughter, or the wife
of thy bosom, or thy friend which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying
let us go serve other gods, which thou has not known, thou and thy father... the gods
of the people which are around you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the
one end of the earth to the other end of the earth: thou shalt not consent unto him,
nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eyes pity him: But thou shalt surely kill
him; thine hand shall be the first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the
hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones that he die; because
he hath sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God which brought thee out of
the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.'"
I tell you what we really have today is a Secular religion of the most monstrous
proportions, exacerbated by the fact that within the Established Church of our
Republic, we have warring sects. We not only have no clear idea of what should be a
commonly acceptable criteria for heroism, we haven't a clue as to whether secular
sainthood can properly exist altogether! If we did, would we keep confusing the way
by which we can proclaim who is a hero, with the process of canonization, the act of
proclaiming someone in the company of the other saints? No clear definition of heroism
can be made, so long as we refuse to recognize the fact that we have established a
new religion.
Our Godhead is, let me repeat, Rizal: in him reposes enough Christian virtues for us
to accept him as we do Saints like Francis of Assisi; this also explains why Catholic
apologists so fiercely maintain that he retracted from Masonry before he died, for
what saint would he be if he died an unrepentant soul! The squirming with which any
mention of Bonifacio is met, in certain circles, is illuminating, too. He is too
dangerous, and not only because of his vision of an egalitarian Philippines, no. He
is threatening because he advocated (too strongly: why couldn't he just flirt with
the idea, like Rizal?) re-ordering society once the revolution was finished. This man,
Bonifacio, who represents the full flowering of the Enlightenment, who earned, to
the end of his life, the admiration of the greatest intellect of the Revolution
itself, Mabini, is casually dismissed with the comment that he was an irrational
man: all the appeals of the Katipunan, of Jacinto and the rest, to Reason, to the
contrary! This, too, is why some continue to view with distaste the man on whose
shoulders, inadequately or not, the rest of the Revolution, from the execution of
Bonifacio on, rested: Aguinaldo is the complete pragmatic man. Saints are not
pragmatic (in the political sense). Ergo , Aguinaldo cannot properly be considered a
saint by the faithful.
We use the trappings of faith, much of the language of faith, we both accept and yet
do not openly admit to this faith, and so, we cannot destroy it and replace it with
something more fitting of a free people.
This Faith, and the secular saints, in whose name the elimination of unorthodox
thought, or deviant beliefs is sought, need not be the one sanctioned by the State;
it may be the Faith (the God: for hasn't it been said often enough that this
anti-religion is really a religion in essence?) known by some as the God of
Dialectical Materialism, a fearsome Being whose spirit breathes fire into the Left.
It may be the God of Abraham, defended by the apologeticists of the Right, who see no
dichotomy between their invoking the names of their own secular saints - saints who
were the first to give a name to their religion, Obscurantism!
There is no fraternity here. Simultaneously, as they try to rearrange, or even
subvert and eliminate altogether, the hierarchy imposed by the State, they have their
own saints to prop up on altars, icons to brandish in the faces of their opponents,
totems to inspire them in their political gyrations. The relationship, between the
human beings they have adopted as their patron saints (and sometimes, not even that;
they have been reduced to ideological mascots), and what their idols really
represented, or believed, or did, however, is never clarified. It's not important.
We could echo Frederick Maitland and say, "The essential matter of history is not
what happened but what people thought or said about it." We could at least then
plead that we are not so arrogant as to put words in the mouths of our ancestors.
But instead what we choose to say is, "the essential matter of history is how well
it fits in, or can be made to fit in, our ideological conception of it." We are back
to separating the sheep from the goats, the church triumphant from the heretics,
schismatics, and idolaters. We are back to breathing the heady air of Inquisition
and Triumphalism.
So, you ask, will you deny me the right to acclaim a hero whose deeds I consider to
have promoted a Philippines in keeping with my ideology? I do not; your views are your
own and none of my business. But I would deny you one thing because you do have an
ideology - I would not have you dictate to me that your hero is the only hero, or the
preeminent one; you may, for all I care, try to tell my why it is that you admire
your hero so, but I must be free to accept or reject what you think. I ask for what
so many died for, during the Revolution: the ability to use my own reason . Never
mind the other things that the revolutionaries fought for, independence, their own
land, liberation from peonage and second-class status in the land of their birth -
for these are things that are properly, still things to be fought for (or resisted)
on an ideological basis. Wage your Crusades, but do not use the symbols I have as
much a right to appropriate, as you do, as the exclusive property of your sect.
A final irony remains. It is one pointed out by descendants of Manila's
revolutionaries, in a moment of brilliance and sublime compassion, before they, too,
fell prey to resurrected animosities and began to whet the knives of historical
vengeance once more: we stand before our saints, preparing for the sort of rituals
more rightfully the preserve of carnivals and town fiestas, and we forget the very
people who inspired these people we have elevated to secular sainthood, in the first
place, to do noble deeds and conduct desperate acts: ourselves. More accurately, our
ancestors, whose heirs we are.
Like heaven, for every individual officially enrolled in the calendar of saints,
there is a multitude who have earned the same distinction (the same salvation),
except that their names are not, nor ever will be, known. For every Del Pilar killed
in glory at Tirad Pass, are thousands of Katipuneros and soldiers of the Republic who
died in ditches, trenches, in forests and fields. If we are curious enough, we can
see pictures of them in museums. Old men and boys, dead: their guts hanging out,
eviscerated by the Mausers and Remingtons of the enemy. They lie, twisted, bathed in
their own blood. We do not know their names.
For every Bonifacio and Antonio Luna killed because of petty intrigue, our worst
attributes as a people, and the inevitability of a Revolution devouring it's own
children, there are hundreds more who sought to serve their country, but were
prevented from doing so because of the depravity of their fellow men. Their names
are not known, but they deserve to be remembered.
For every officer whose name we know, there are others whose names are lost to us.
For every brave wife, sister, or beau who did her part for the Revolution, there are
thousands whose names we will never know. Their stories
that may have been more tragic, or inspiring, than the ones that have been handed
down: but they are lost to us, forever.
For every genius like Rizal, every gifted writer or cripple like Mabini, are hundreds
more, professional men, civilians, who died during the Revolution, or who died
unremembered, in poverty and neglect. For every Aguinaldo, or Ricarte, who did not
shirk from what he saw as his duty -and paid the price forever, in terms of their
ambivalent reputation in history- are many others who tried to keep faith with the
struggle, only to be rewarded with the judgment of a forgetful and judgmental people.
These are the people whom we should pay attention to, now. If we must have religion,
we had better start concentrating on the Church Militant, these unknowns. Enough of
the Church Triumphant. It is to these people that we must pay our respects, and
derive our strength from. In them we can see ourselves, and the real glory we can
aspire to.
We could secure more knoweldge and a kind of justice by asking of Spain, which has
been enlightened enough to begin preparations for the erection of a statue of Rizal
in his beloved Madrid, that it give us the transcript of the trials of Gomburza and
Rizal, which remain classified documents in the Royal Archives. We could demand of
the United States that it strike out all reference to "The Philippine Insurrection"
in the textbooks of that country and properly refer it by it's proper name - The
Filipino-American War- and thus earn proper recognition for the hundreds of thousands
who perished during that brutal campaign. We could make sure that the plunder of our
revolutionary papers is never repeated, and the culprits punished. We could give a
proper home to the artifacts of our race, in a National Museum worthy of the name.
We could retrieve other documents and other memorabilia in the hands of merchants who
are hoarding them, looking for a profit. We could end our attempts to whitewash a past
which, you would think, we are now mature enough to celebrate for its richness in
glorious -and nefarious- events.
But will we? No! For the very same reasons that our heroes got caught in doubts as to
whether we could really become a free people. Mummery is just to nice; the trinkets
of our pseudo-religion are all-too beguiling; the new obscurantism is all too stifling, for much of us to want to spend our energies on looking for a more meaningful future.
We are cultists in what was meant to be the temple of Reason, groveling before idols
which have no relation to the greatness they are meant to portray.
And so: on to fun and games, the insubstantiality of a National Centennial!
