Deus ex populo: Timeless Counter-hegemonic

Characterization and Discourse in Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere1

Key Terms: Literary Criticism; Hegemony; Rizaliana; Historical Contextualization; Discourse Analysis

ABSTRACT

Amidst the official glorification of Jose Rizal’s writings, a number of scholars tend to focus on

the petty details of the national hero’s life. Substance is sacrificed at the altar of popularization and

wanton mass consumption of bogus Rizaliana. His writings are seldom invoked to contextualize the

social problems of contemporary society in academic articles, thereby diluting the power of his counter-

hegemonic thought.

This paper analyzes the contribution of Jose Rizal’s literary masterpiece to the endeavor of

building a culture of counter-hegemony through the counter-hegemonic characterization and discourse in

his first novel Noli Me Tangere. A contextualized and indigenized Marxist approach was utilized to

effectively scrutinize the counter-hegemonic thought in Rizal’s first novel. Pertinent contemporary events

and personages were tackled side-by-side with the national hero’s musings to emphasize the continuing

relevance of his social criticism even in this complex era of globalization.

~~~

In an era of rampant economic globalization and in spite of its being in a quagmire due to the

protracted international financial crisis culminating in America’s ascent as the world’s biggest debtor

nation and a series of painful social spending cuts from America to European nations such as Greece and

Portugal, the United States of America and its allies continue to impose their economic hegemony over

the Philippines. This hegemony of Western and/or foreign standards encompass education, culture and

even literary criticism in the Philippines. In fact, western-oriented formalist approaches in literary

criticism continue to dominate academic discourse in the country, long after critics abroad have

abandoned such shallow methodologies. Nevertheless, as the international financial crisis – which can be

1Published in DALUMAT E-Journal Vol. 2, No. 2 (2011), Numina Publications. http://ejournals.ph/index.php?journal=DALUMAT&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=3164

traced to the implosion of failures of the capitalist system – lingers and worsens, an increasing number of

people begin to oppose and resist the economic and cultural hegemony of the United States, the leading

overtly capitalist country worldwide.

In the field of literary criticism, more and more critics are beginning to refrain from using

Americanized literary theories particularly formalism and the so-called “New Criticism.” The calls and

endeavors to tilt literary criticism from focusing on form towards emphasizing content are snowballing.

The perspective that considers literature as the mirror of society and the inherent contradictions within it

(hence it is not an entirely independent entity) is slowly regaining ground in contemporary discourse. The

interest of academicians in Marxist-oriented literary criticism has become livelier than ever. But what

exactly is Marxism?

While esteemed Filipino Marxist critics do exist to expound on Marxism and how it can be

utilized in literary criticism, most of them have been residing and/or teaching abroad for decades now.

Thus, their discourse is typically linguistically influenced by First World Marxists, which unfortunately

renders itself largely inaccessible to most Filipino students who prefer simpler language and

contextualized readings suitable to their collective contemporary experience. Unfortunately, distinct

homegrown voices of indigenized Marxism are usually relegated to the sidelines of mainstream academe,

unread and unrecognized except by a few radical academicians and students, dismissed as redundant by

those enthralled with Westernized jargon, or more precisely, what many Filipino students label and deride

as “nosebleed English.”

Class Contradiction and Hegemony: The Oppressed Versus the Oppressors

Those who want to understand Marxism and the corresponding Marxist literary theory conceived

from its womb are constrained to review a “subversive” document. The first chapter of the Communist

Manifesto written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (18882) clearly illustrates the gist and spirit of

2 The English version used in this essay was published in 1888. The original manifesto (written in German) was published in 1848.

Marxism with this introductory thesis: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class

struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a

word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted,

now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of

society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.” Simply put, Marxism is an ideology

that views the society as having two divisions, two broad social classes that contradict one another: the

oppressors and the oppressed, the exploiters and the exploited. It is this simplified worldview that

strengthens Marxism’s relevance to the socio-cultural realities in Third World countries like the

Philippines.

Antonio Gramsci, an Italian socialist theorist, introduced the term “hegemony” in his

Prison Notebooks to explain how the oppressors are able to overcome and dominate the oppressed. He

points out that through ostensible consent and further forceful persuasion, the oppressed is effectively

engulfed by the oppressors led by what Gramsci call as the “hegemon.” His social analysis “provides a

philosophical framework within which we can explore the power relations between dominant and

minority groups, particularly the means by which the dominant group, or the ‘leading’ group, secures its

power and position” (Suarez 2002). It is in this context that non-Marxist works such as Jose Rizal’s Noli

Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo can still be scrutinized using Marxist tools of analysis.

Ostensibly, the current article doesn’t apply Marx’ strict proletariat-versus-bourgeoisie (or

worker-versus-capitalist) dichotomy, but rather indigenizes Marxism by focusing on the more generic

oppressed-versus-oppressor dichotomy which is highly evident in Rizal’s works. As per Frantz Fanon’s

“stretching out of Marxism,” the main contradiction in the Philippines is between the “wretched of the

earth” and those who cause and/or impose their wretchedness. Finding strict proletariat-versus-

bourgeoisie battles in his writings can be problematic because Rizal is not a Marxist. This article is a

conscious endeavor aimed at reasserting the necessity of paying attention to homegrown Marxist voices

whose main strength is contemporary contextualization of literary writings in its original local setting –

the oppressed-versus-oppressor dichotomy consistently observed since the time of Spanish colonization

up to these times of neocolonial hegemony – a process too complex to be left to Filipino Marxist critics

who have been residing abroad in recent years. The endeavor to “let a thousand flowers bloom and let a

thousand schools of thought contend” as the Chinese Marxist theorist and leader Mao Tse Tung had

envisioned, will be empty sloganeering at its best, if relatively new and unknown Marxist critics in the

Philippines will be always dismissed as redundant (with the well-meaning critics unable to pinpoint what

ideas and details of indigenous Marxist analysis are merely echoing the voices of esteemed Marxist critics

abroad).

Marxist Reading of Rizal’s Novels

The novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo written by Jose Rizal (who is non-Marxist and

did not read any Marxist material) can be analyzed by a Marxist critic through emphasizing the

contradictions and relationships between the abusive Spanish authorities of the colonial government in the

Philippines; the hypocritical and outrageously immoral Spanish friars and a handful members of the

Filipino elite, bureaucrats and mercenaries that serve as subservient and willing instruments of the

colonial government on the one hand (Padre Damaso, the alferez (town lieutenant) in Noli Me Tangere,

the governor general in El Fili, Fray Salvi, Don Custodio, Señor Pasta, civil guards etc.), and the

oppressed, debased and exploited Filipinos on the other (Sisa, Basilio, Crispin, Tales’ family, the

tulisanes, rebels or “outlaws” who continued the struggle of Commander Pablo and Elias). What makes

such reading imperative is the fact that current socio-cultural realities in the country that underwent two

People Power revolts in a span of just less than two decades reveal the same social cancers that Rizal has

exposed in his acclaimed twin novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. The characters in the long-

playing script have just assumed new names, so to speak, but the socio-cultural context remains virtually

unchanged. Without clear contextualization, Rizal’s novels would just be relegated to the dustbins of

history by young people who are no longer aware and conscious that the socio-economic stratification in

Rizal’s time remains intact and almost unchanged even by more than one hundred years of superficial

political independence from foreign powers, and as a result, the wretched remains wretched and the

oppressors continuously enjoy their role as oppressors in the never-ending national saga.

Deus Ex Populo: Human Figures Building A Culture Against Hegemony

Rizal’s expose of the binary division of social classes (the generic oppressed-versus-oppressor

dichotomy) didn’t end with a mere revelation of the so-called “social cancers” of the country. All

throughout his novels, Rizal’s characters and their words form a strong yet slightly disparate counter-

hegemonic discourses aimed at the tyrannical ruling class of corrupt Spanish bureaucrats, the local pro-

Spanish elite, barbarously violent civil guards and pathetically immoral and hypocritical friars. Rizal

described and unmasked both the oppressed and the oppressors but he nonetheless emphasized the

Filipino people’s capacity to counter, oppose, resist and even subvert the oppressive foreign hegemony in

their own ways and in various levels of forcefulness. Thus a rereading of Noli Me Tangere and El

Filibusterismo will lead one to find out that Tasio’s philosophical yet seemingly incoherent rants are as

counter-hegemonic as Simoun’s forceful tirades delivered in a dialogue with the conformist Basilio. In

the same manner, rebel Matanglawin’s character is as effective as the meek Padre Florentino’s person in

delivering fatal blows against Spanish hegemony through their seemingly different words and deeds.

All these characters and their counter-hegemonic discourse expose a breed of the non-passive

oppressed, those who in one way or another seemingly perform the role of a savior, a messiah of their

fellow oppressed from the shackles of various forms of hegemony be it cultural or political. This writer

suggests that the phenomenon of counter-hegemonic characters be called deus ex populo (god out of the

people), following the tradition of deus ex machina. Deus ex machina refers to the use of “artificial

resolution” of the conflict in the plot by characters and/or things that seem to suddenly appear out of

nowhere. The suggestion to use the term deus ex populo is inspired by such literary tool present in

Western literature, but it must be clarified that in the Philippine context, the conflict resolution is not

anymore artificial but instead is natural, made flesh, incarnated in the form of human figures who don’t

appear from nowhere like the gods lowered through a string in Greek plays (hence the term deus ex

machina in standard literary jargon). Instead, what Rizal’s novels seem to portray are living and powerful,

perhaps god-like figures, though not omnipotent – at times they experience defeat, may die naturally or

even get killed but nevertheless, they remain seemingly immortal for their struggle against hegemony is

carried on by other figures, thus it’s “deus” and not “Deus.” That these deus ex populo characters in

Rizal’s novels belong to various social classes – from Crisostomo Ibarra of the landlord class to Don

Filipo of the bureaucracy, to Pilosopong Tasio of the petty bourgeois intellectuals, to Elias who come

from (or at least live like and/or among) the “wretched of the earth” – all the more necessitates the

indigenization of Marxism in the Philippines. Traditional Marxism that divides the world in the band of

the proletariat and the horde of the bourgeoisie simply has no clear place in the complex characterization

of Rizal’s novels which was written at a time when virtually no Filipino is yet to be fully acquainted with

Marxist writings like the classic Communist Manifesto. Thus, Rizal’s relevance in these times of recurring

capitalist crises could best be revealed by adopting an indigenized form of Marxism that emphasizes

counter-hegemonic thought in the Gramscian sense, rather than within the context of strictly traditional

Marxist proletariat-versus-bourgeoisie dichotomy.

Pyramids to Bury Tyrants

The Philippine national hero himself affirms the counter-hegemonic value of his literary

masterpiece Noli Me Tangere in a lengthy letter to Vicente Barrantes3 (1890): “And twisted like my spirit

is that of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos who have not yet left their miserable homes, who do not

speak any language but their own, and if they would write or express their thoughts, they would leave my

Noli Me Tangere very puny indeed and with their volumes, there would be enough to raise pyramids for

the corpses of all the tyrants...” Rizal argues that if Barrantes considers him as someone with a “twisted

spirit” for exposing abuses of the colonial set-up in his country, majority of Filipinos in the Philippines

would in effect be all the more “twisted” for if they can only write, his own Noli will appear weak

(though of course it is strong-worded as gauged from the Spanish colonial government’s eventual censure

3 A Spanish politician who criticized Rizal’s first novel.

of his first novel) in the face of volumes upon volumes of more forceful writings that will precipitate

equally fierce revolts “enough to raise pyramids for the corpses of all the tyrants.” Rizal was being

modest when he claimed his novel will appear “very puny” compared with the common people’s

unwritten sentiments, for all throughout his two published novels, many characters – many of them

neglected if not totally unnoticed by most esteemed and well-published Marxist critics – reveal the

author’s counter-hegemonic stance and discourse. A closer look at these characters, at least those in Noli

Me Tangere, may deem Rizal’s novels good enough to bury today’s tyrants.

It must be noted that Professor Jose Maria Sison’s classic Marxist analysis of Rizal’s writings

titled Rizal the “Subversive,” indeed gave a broad view on Rizal’s counter-hegemonic relevance, but

unfortunately, it is too short to provide a detailed discourse analysis of the national hero’s writings. That

Prof. Sison’s critique didn’t include any quotation from Rizal’s writings is understandable, considering

the fact that it was written in the late 1960s, not to provide a full-blown study of Rizal’s counter-

hegemonic thought, but rather, to utilize Rizal’s actual counter-hegemonic stance in strengthening the

people’s struggle against the tyranny of reactionaries/conservatives who oppose every radical idea as

“communist.” Thus, this article will supplement, rather than repeat, what Prof. Sison (who has been in

exile in The Netherlands since the late 1980s) had outlined in his classic essay.

Another internationally-acclaimed Filipino Marxist scholar is Professor Epifanio San Juan, Jr , a

long-time resident of the United States and visiting professor to various universities abroad. Like Prof.

Sison, Prof. San Juan also contributed to the landmark anthology Rizal: Contrary Essays edited by Prof.

Petronilo Daroy and Prof. Dolores S. Feria, with his essay Rizal and The Human Condition. As in his

other Rizal-themed articles like the more recent Rizal in the USA: Escaping the Anglo Quarantine,

Reinventing “Indios Bravos,” and the more-than-a-decade old yet equally incisive Introduction to Rizal:

Toward a Re-Interpretation, Prof. San Juan contextualized Rizal’s counter-hegemonic relevance using

many foreign references, specifically authors whose works are yet to become accessible and popularized

in the Philippines. Thus, while Prof. E. San Juan’s highly academic and eloquently written essays

certainly give delight and provide enlightenment to high-caliber academicians and erudite researchers, a

number of Filipino students who have no access to the writings of Edward Said, Howard Zinn, Benedict

Anderson, Karl Marx (especially his Das Kapital), Emile Durkheim, Kierkegaard, Hegel etc., will be left

mystified at worst and merely enthralled at best after reading his critique of/on Rizal. Within this context,

this article aims to provide an easy-to-read and highly accessible analysis of the national hero’s first novel

to supplement existing references using an indigenized form of Marxism as a framework.

While Prof. E. San Juan’s Toward Rizal (which appeared in another milestone anthology on Rizal

titled Himalay, and edited by Prof. Patricia Melendrez-Cruz and Prof. Apolonio Bayani Chua) is written

in a relatively more accessible language and while it succeeded in expounding on Rizal’s counter-

hegemonic characters, it strictly contextualized Rizal’s novels within Rizal’s times, and not liberally

within the contemporary setting too as this current article attempts to do. It must be noted that Prof. E.

San Juan’s Toward Rizal was first published in 1983 as a book. For this same reason, the current article is

necessary and not redundant. Himalay, probably the thickest and most comprehensive anthology of

researches on Jose Rizal (as of this writing, the possible publication of the conference proceedings of the

recent International Conference on Jose Rizal held last June 2011 at the University of the Philippines,

Diliman, Quezon City is yet to be accomplished) was published in 1991. Twenty years since Himalay’s

publication, Rizal’s first novel, especially its characters, need to be reread within these times’ context.

This current article could become a more contemporary companion to Professor Albina Peczon

Fernandez’ Kakaibang Pagbasa sa El Filibusterismo/Different Reading of El Filibusterismo, a

contextualized Marxist reading of Rizal’s second novel which was also included in Himalay.

The Unknown Poet: Restrained Rebuke of Censorship

Chapter 2 of Noli Me Tangere introduces Crisostomo Ibarra, a young man who came back from

Europe to seek the truth behind his father’s mysterious incarceration and eventual death. Among the men

in the banquet held in honor of Ibarra, only one seemed familiar to him: “a poet whose works have for so

long kept alive my love of country.4” It is unfortunate that none of the consulted5 translations provide any

clue on the identity of this poet. Ibarra asked the poet to justify why he ceased from writing: “They say

you stopped writing, but nobody seems to know why.” Cunningly, Rizal through the poet exposed and

condemned the political hegemony of tyrannical Spaniards in the Philippines by providing this reason:

“Why? Because one does not write poetry in order to flatter and to lie. Someone I know was brought

before a judge for putting a commonplace in rhyme. Well, they’ve called me a poet, but they’ll never call

me a fool.” Ibarra further asked “And may I know what the commonplace was?” It will be quite shocking

to those reared in the embrace of democracy to hear the poet’s answer: “Why, that the son of a lion is also

a lion. The man barely escaped exile.” By highlighting such hypersensitivity of the colonial government

to almost any written material, Rizal effectively unmasked Spain’s political hegemony in the Philippines

which was solidified by the lack of press freedom and other basic civil liberties.

Old Repentant Priest: A Friar’s Conscience

In Chapter 9 of Noli Me Tangere, Father Sibyla, a Dominican priest tasked secretly to assess

Ibarra’s plans, converses with a sick and old fellow Dominican, unnamed just like the poet in Chapter 2.

The old Dominican’s musings are symptomatic of a conscience-stricken friar who desires change of heart

among his fellow Spaniards and fears that their hegemony’s end is imminent unless reforms are instituted:

“...attacks wake us up; we discover our weaknesses, and can improve ourselves. Exaggerated praises only

fool us, lull us to sleep...All will go as they went in Europe. The worst part of it is that we are working our

own ruin. For example, take this unbridled desire to raise every year, and at our own discretion, the

rentals on our lands; it will be our ruin...I fear we are, on the decline. Whom God would destroy, He first

makes mad. That is why we should lighten our hand; already the people complain.” He criticizes the

4 For the purpose of quoting various passages in Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere, this paper used Leon Ma. Guerrero’s English translation (1961), except when stated otherwise. Leon Ma. Guerrero’s translation was utilized because of its relative popularity (as attested by its continuous reprinting throughout the decades) and linguistic “contemporariness.” As this is not a translation study, the writer arbitrarily set aside the known criticism of Leon Ma. Guerrero’s translation put forward by some foreign “experts.” Leon Ma. Guerrero’s easy-to-read and eloquent translation makes it suitable for this essay’s main aim of contextualizing Rizal’s first novel.5 English translations by Guerrero, and Lacson-Locsin (1996) and Filipino translation by Antonio & Melendrez-Cruz (1991).

Church’s greed for higher land rents and hopes that the colonial government’s high-handed ways will

change.

The sick priest doesn’t only engages in self-criticism but he also lays down what should be done,

declaring that while he won’t force his compatriots to change, he would at least strive to change himself

and be like a lotus plant, remaining pretty clean amidst a putrid and polluted environment: “I have

thought it well; let the others do what they will; let us for our part try to keep whatever prestige we have

left; and since we shall soon appear before God, let us keep our hands clean...” Thus, at the very least, by

trying to be a beacon of decency amidst a corrupt hegemony, the old priest manages to be a mouthpiece

of Rizal’s counter-hegemonic discourse. Today’s people can only hope that more and more clergymen

and bureaucrats will learn to emulate the old Dominican’s “lotus” principle.

Honorable Soldiers: Against the Hegemony of Stereotypes

With the stereotypical violence and notorious barbarity of many civil guards during the Spanish

hegemony, readers might find it awkward to discover the fact that Rizal included some liberal if not

enlightened soldiers like the ageing Lieutenant Guevara who was introduced in Chapter 2, and the friar-

bashing governor-general6 himself in Noli Me Tangere.

Lieutenant Guevara is a mild-mannered soldier who considers Ibarra’s father as his friend. He

dared to publicly chastise Father Damaso, a violator of celibacy and the talkative former parish priest of

San Diego (setting of Noli Me Tangere; the microcosm of Philippine society in the novel) who caused the

incarceration of Ibarra’s father and later ordered the exhumation and desecration of his remains. Referring

to Father Damaso, Lieutenant Guevara issued this tirade: “Well, then, this priest, having returned to his

parish and learning what had occurred, first turned his anger upon his unfortunate vicar, and then ordered

the corpse of the gentleman in question (Ibarra’s father) to be dug up, thrown out of the cemetery, and

buried I don’t know where. The town of San Diego was too cowardly to protest...But His Excellency (the

governor-general) heard of it, and because he is a man with a good heart, he asked that the outrage be

6 The commander-in-chief and almost supreme ruler of the Philippines then.

punished...” While the ageing lieutenant remains a part of the oppressive status quo, he at least makes

sure in his own way that justice is served to whom it is due. During the Spanish hegemony, only the

bravest among the brave dare go against friars, for they know that some friars are powerful enough to

cause the murder of the highest executive official in the colonial set-up, the governor general himself.

Thus, Rizal’s use of Lieutenant Guevara’s character to assail friars for their abuses is another attempt to

undermine what Marcelo H. del Pilar has called as frailocracy in his satire La Frailocracia Filipina

(1889). Father Damaso represents what is bad and unwanted in Spain’s hegemony over the Philippines

while Lieutenant Guevara stands for what Rizal once hoped to preserve and further develop if had the

Philippines been benevolently assimilated and equally treated as a province of Spain.

Lieutenant Guevara’s commander-in-chief, the man they address as “His Excellency,” the

governor-general himself, made known his displeasure of abusive and irreverent friars through this

statement in Chapter 9: “...I know the Father Provincial made a mockery of my order. I ask the transfer of

that friar as a punishment, and they go and move him to a much better parish. Typical friar’s tricks...”

Alone, the governor-general can’t help but express his disappointment with the people’s lack of outrage

against frailocracy that seems to overpower him at times: “Ah, if these people weren’t so stupid, they’d

soon take the measure of these Reverences!” While his statement reeks of disdain for the helplessly

subservient Filipinos, his tone also implies his desire for them to rise-up against the abuses of friars so

that eventually, with many temporary allies, he will easily be able to get back at the abusive men of the

cloth. At the most, Lieutenant Guevara and the friar-bashing governor-general in Noli Me Tangere

presaged the current voices of dissent within the ruling class, such as General Francisco Gudani, General

Danilo “Danny” Lim, Navy Lieutenant Nancy Gadian and former Lieutenant and now Senator Antonio

Trillanes. At the very least, Rizal’s characterization of Lieutenant Guevara and the governor-general in

Noli Me Tangere battles the hegemony of stereotypical civil guards, while emphasizing the context of his

anti-clerical bias.

In a letter to his critic Vicente Barrantes (1890), Rizal directly mentioned his apparent penchant

for subverting frailocracy as his primary goal is writing Noli Me Tangere: “For all its faults (the Noli) has

served my purposes. If it is not the shiny nickel-plated, perfectly shaped bullet which an academician can

fire, and only a rough pebble picked up from a brook, still, it has struck the head of that two-faced Goliath

that in the Philippines is called friar-rule and mal-administration.” Nonetheless, other characters in both

Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo are more explicit in their opposition to the whole oppressive

colonial system – which includes not only the purveyors of frailocracy but also the Spanish officials in

the corrupt bureaucracy – that makes Spanish hegemony possible and unbearable.

Tasio the Philosopher: The Wise Old Man Against Political and Cultural Hegemony and “Official

Puppetry”

Though considered a fool by many for his “unorthodox ideas and odd behavior,” Tasio or Don

Anastasio remains the most vibrant and witty counter-hegemonic character in Rizal’s two novels. In

Chapter 14, his background as a former seminarian who chose a woman over his vocation, and a rich heir

who spent much of his wealth on books to escape sorrow brought by his love’s early demise, is revealed.

Meeting the mayor7 amidst the background of a coming storm, readers will meet Tasio as his witty self in

this chapter. The mayor, while casting “a mocking glance at the old man’s shabby clothes,” asked Tasio

with a tone of surprise: “The storm? You’re thinking of taking a bath!” The old man with the “shabby

clothes” cleverly replied while sarcastically looking at the mayor: “A bath? Not a bad idea, especially

after stumbling across garbage.” This statement is enough to disprove that Tasio is a fool. Indeed, how

can an old man that calls a submissive mayor garbage be a fool when he’s asserting a well-known fact?

Through Tasio, Rizal exposes and ridicules the seemingly marionette-like behavior of Filipino officials in

the Spanish colonial government. Details of the mayor’s subservience and impotence as a bogus leader is

exposed in Chapter 20, where he presides over a meeting that disregarded the enlightened consensus of

those present to comply with the luxurious whims of the parish priest.

In the course of their discourse, Tasio passionately lectured against the absurd hegemony of

superstitions over science in the era of Spanish colonization, a hegemony which virtually frustrated his

7 In the original, the term that Rizal used is gobernadorcillo, which literally means “little governor.”

every effort to institute practical scientific reforms: “You have there a brace of candles bought from a

Chinaman’s shop. For my part, I have suggested to every mayor this town has had in the last ten years the

purchase of a lightning-rod, but everybody laughs it off, and would rather spend the money on fireworks

and bell-pealing. You yourself went even further; the very day after I made a suggestion to you, you

commissioned a Chinese foundry to cast a bell for St. Barbara, who is supposed to be our patroness in

storms, although it has been scientifically established that it is dangerous to ring bells in stormy

weather...” Tasio’s words against bureaucratic stupidity and absurdity certainly remains relevant in a time

of recent absurdities such as a non-existing 40-kilometer railroad8 that costs $503 million, the 728

million-peso fertilizer fund which was ostensibly used to acquire foliar fertilizer (used for orchids) for

distribution in rice-producing districts and non-agricultural areas, billion-dollar mining contracts given to

foreign companies despite constitutional barriers against foreign exploitation of the country’s national

resources and many more.

Tasio’s cunning counter-hegemonic statements will again surface in Chapter 20 where he

condemned the marionette-like behavior of the town mayor (the same one he called garbage in Chapter

14) who presided a meeting that ended in the latter’s imposition of the parish priest’s pompous feast day

agenda over the popular consensus on a more enlightened proposal, through self-mockery: “The fault is

ours! You did not protest when you were given a lackey for a leader; and I, woe is me! I had forgotten

about it.9”

In Chapter 25 of Noli Me Tangere’s first edition10, Tasio explains his reason for using

hieroglyphics in scribbling his thoughts: “I am not writing for this generation but for those yet to come. If

this one could read what I have written, it would burn my books...But the generation that deciphers these

characters will be a learned generation; it will understand me and say: Not everyone slept during the night

of our forefathers!” Perhaps, Rizal wants succeeding post-colonial generations to understand and

8 The still unfinished North Rail Project from Caloocan City to Calumpit, Bulacan.9 Curiously, this doesn’t appear in Guerrero’s translation. Thus, for this part, Lacson-Locsin’s translation was quoted.10 Rizal’s original first edition omitted a chapter on Elias and Salome. Later translations and editions reinserted it as the 25th chapter, thus moving the chapter on Tasio and Ibarra’s conversation and other succeeding chapters to the 26th and so on.

appreciate his hieroglyphic-like statements of counter-hegemony in Noli Me Tangere and El

Filibusterismo. That he chose to diversify his counter-hegemonic discourse through various characters

with differing levels of enlightenment and eloquence seems to suggest his desire for future generations

with slightly different contexts to still be able to comprehend his novels and use them for their own

counter-hegemonic struggles. Rizal accepts that his generation lives in the long dark night of tyranny but

persists in keeping awake through scribbling his counter-hegemonic thoughts in the mouths of diverse

and at times unlikely figures.

After a short discussion on hieroglyphics and migratory swallows, Tasio went on to express his

disgust on the ruling colonial system and the colonized mentality that it breeds: “They think the Mayor is

smart because he has never learned to do anything except serve chocolate to the parish priests...but now

he is rich, can trouble the petty dreams of his fellow citizens, and sometimes even talks of justice. There’s

a man with brains! the masses think. See – he started with nothing and he has become great!” Rizal

through Tasio condemns the malleability of local elite leaders and the masses’ skewed pragmatism as the

twin causes and effects (and vice-versa) of the long-lasting Spanish hegemony. The philosopher issues a

warning to the overly optimistic and politically naive Ibarra: “Cave ne cadas. Beware lest you fall!

Money talks, and the golden calf has many times ousted God from His altars, even in the days of Moses.”

Through this statement, Rizal acknowledges that the fight against hegemony can’t be won with good

intentions, that a particular hegemony may last because of money, which gives tyrants the power to

acquire the loyalty of even the stoutest democrat.

On the malleability of colonial and neo-colonial governments, Tasio has these truthfully nerve-

racking thoughts: “The Government! The Government you say!....the Government itself sees nothing,

hears nothing except what the parish priest or the head of a religious Order makes it see, hear and

decide...The government does not plan a better future; it is only an arm...Because of the inertia with

which it allows itself to be dragged from failure to failure, it becomes a shadow, loses its identity, and,

weak and incapable, entrusts everything to selfish interests...” Only the masters have changed but the

puppet show remains almost the same. In Rizal’s time, the government has friars as masters. Presently,

recent regimes have businessmen and foreign powers as their masters and backers. In the context of

Tasio’s thoughts, contemporary Filipinos will better be aware how their autocratic leaders have become

willing puppets of more powerful forces “from above.” Tasio’s remarks explain why every traditional

political leader in the Philippines think that granting parity rights to foreigners (what is packaged as

“globalization” and “liberalization”) and giving all leeway to profit-minded businessmen (disguised as

“laissez faire economics” or “deregulation,” and under the Noynoy Aquino administration, as the “Public-

Private Partnership” or PPP scheme) will solve poverty, while rejecting debt renegotiation, land reform,

industrialization and other alternatives offered by modern day Tasios of aboveground social movements,

civil society groups and non-government grassroots organizations. Election after election, businessmen

and foreign lobbyists replace what Tasio call as a “discarded puppet,” the exiting marionette regime, in a

farce now called as “elections.” Indeed, even former Chief Justice Reynato Puno’s denunciation of “a

government still beholden to oligarchs” mirrors Tasio’s counter-hegemonic musings.

Tasio further unmasked the malevolence of tyranny by revealing its tried-and-tested tools of

subjugation against people who think of rising up against hegemony: “The government is intimidated

with threats...and the people cowed with the Government’s armed forces...The people do not complain

because they have no choice; they do not move because they are in a stupor...” Rizal thus clarified that

economic and political hegemony is further solidified through arms, through the force of guns, as what

today’s tyrants know.

Slightly contrary to Prof. Jose Ma. Sison’s description of Tasio as an “idealist cynic” in his

brilliant essay Rizal The Subversive (1968), Rizal’s wise old man speaks of the certain redemption of the

oppressed, the time when tyrants will be buried, no longer in the pyramids of counter-hegemonic books

but in the pits dug by the oppressed: “...you say that they do not suffer because you have not seen how

their hearts bleed. But some day you will see and hear! Then woe unto those who draw their strength

from ignorance and fanaticism, who take their pleasure in fraud, and who work under the cover of night,

confident that all are asleep! When the light of day reveals the monstrous creatures of the night, the

reaction will be terrifying. All the forces stifled for centuries, the poisons distilled drop by drop, all the

repressed emotions, will come to light in a great explosion. Who shall then settle the accounts, such

accounts as the peoples of the world have presented from time to time in those revolutions that history

records in bloodstained pages?”

Tasio’s revolutionary prophecy is echoed, answered if not fulfilled by the anarchist rebel Simoun

in Rizal’s El Filibusterismo as he describes his anarchist masterpiece – a bomb in a crystalline lamp – to

Basilio: “Quite right, nitroglycerine and yet something rather more than nitroglycerine: the essence of

tears, the compound of hatred, injustice and wrongs, the final argument of the weak, force against force,

violence to match violence...it will blow to pieces the most dangerous of tyrants...the Philippines will hear

the explosion that will finally destroy the rotten structure...” Tasio’s prophecy is enough to forewarn

today’s tyrants about the consequences of maintaining an oppressive hegemony: the birth of a myriad of

Simouns, rebels of all sorts and dissenters of various political persuasions united in the goal of toppling

tyranny. Within this context, it is very easy to explain why the Communist Party of the Philippines and

the Moro Islamic Liberation Front remain resilient even after successive bloody government anti-

insurgency campaigns have been implemented.

Bringing out the cunning political scientist within him, Tasio thwarted Ibarra’s reformist hopes

regarding enlightened leaders who might try to institute changes “from above,” naive do-gooders who fail

to enlighten, organize and mobilize the masses and thus never succeed despite their good intentions: “The

reforms which come from above are annulled below by the vices of all, by, for example, the get-rich-

quick madness, and the ignorance of the people who let everything pass. Abuses cannot be corrected by

royal decree if zealous authorities do not watch over its execution, and while freedom of speech against

excesses of petty tyrants is not granted. Otherwise plans will stay plans, the abuses will continue...”

Through this wise observation, Rizal is able to outline the ingredients in cooking up recipes against

tyranny and toward good governance: good and zealous executives, enlightened and organized people and

freedom of speech to guarantee a healthy exchange of ideas toward achieving an enlightened popular

consensus.

Rizal through Tasio particularly emphasized the need for a government that listens and works for

and with the people in the battle against colonialism, and perhaps even against neocolonialism and

present-day imperialism, a government that rejects foreign intervention and serves the interests of its own

people: “So long as the government does not deal directly with the people it will not cease to be a ward,

and it will live like those idiots who tremble at the sound of their keeper’s voice and curry his favor...”

Concluding his conversation with Ibarra, Tasio, ever the realist dreamer, acknowledges the

possibility that despite good intentions and zealous toils, the movement for change may still fail, one way

or another, but such failure is only temporary for the liberation of the oppressed, the dawn of a new day

will certainly come, for the counter-hegemonic deus ex populo, the anti-tyrannical figures live on beyond

literal death, through this eloquent declaration: “If that were to happen, if the enterprise should fail you

would be comforted by the thought that you had done everything in your power. In any case, something

would have been gained. The cornerstone would have been laid, the seed would have been sown. After

the tempest some grain might perhaps sprout, survive the catastrophe, save the species from annihilation,

and serve as grain seed for the children of the perished sower. The example of others can encourage those

who only fear to begin.”

It appears that every time Tasio enters the narrative, a brilliant idea is expounded, as in the case of

the original Chapter 29 of Noli Me Tangere. Asked by his good friend, the vice mayor, why he remains

“gloomier than ever” while others celebrate the feast day with gusto, he offers a short lecture against

unnecessary opulence. Remaining “the same as always, in his coarse-fibered, dark-striped shirt, buttoned

up the neck, comfortable shoes, and ash-colored, broad-brimmed felt hat,” while others are in their best

pompous apparel, Tasio in his usual style grabbed the chance to educate his friend by rebuking official

lavishness in the face of the people’s poverty saying: “Having a good time doesn’t mean making fools of

ourselves! It’s the same senseless orgy every year. And all for what? Throwing away all the money when

there is so much misery and need! But of course! I understand. The orgy, the bacchanal, serves to drown

out the general lamentation.” This echoes Tasio’s disdain for a government that buys candles and bells for

St. Barbara (the patron saint of those seeking protection against lightning) instead of buying lightning

rods. With Tasio’s witty commentary, today’s circumspect observers will readily understand why

governments of poor countries like the Philippines want to maintain an aura of happiness, a façade of

festiveness, amidst sprawling hunger and poverty – that is, to create an illusion of contentment aimed at

minimizing the possibility of the people rising up with arms against government inaction on their destitute

situation.

Recent readers, just like Rizal’s critic Vicente Barrantes, might remark that Tasio’s character is

too good to be true, a realist dreamer, a wise old man that speaks his brilliant mind on almost any topic, a

seemingly perfect and perfectionist voice of reason and enlightenment. The national hero himself has the

answer in a letter to Barrantes (1890): “But I have depicted the good beside the bad. I have depicted an

Elias and a Tasio, because the Elias and the Tasios exist, exist, exist...only that Your Excellency and your

partisans, fearing that the few good men I have portrayed may serve as an example to the bad and redeem

them, shout that it is false, poetic, exaggerated, ideal, impossible, improbable...” Rizal, after all, wants

every Filipino to emulate Elias and Tasio however poetic, ideal and improbable their good characters

seem to be. He expects that through his portrayal of Tasio and other good characters, Filipinos would

awaken to the fact that they’re capable of transforming themselves and their country. More than one

hundred years since Tasio appeared in Rizal’s narrative, the Philippines still lurk in the dark night of

neocolonialism, with few modern-day Tasios to carry on the struggle for freedom till the coming of the

dawn.

The First Democrat and Dissenter: Paragon of Service in a Corrupt Bureaucracy

Long before Don Claro M. Recto, Lorenzo Tañada, Jose Diokno, Jovito Salonga, Teofisto

Guingona and Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel, the Philippines have Don Filipo Lino in Rizal’s Noli Me

Tangere. Don Filipo is introduced in Chapter 14 as the “liberal” vice-mayor (teniente mayor) of San

Diego. Don Filipo’s democratic credentials will be in full blossom in Chapter 20, where, in a town

meeting, he leads the so-called liberals in San Diego in pushing for an enlightened budget plan for their

annual feast day celebrations. Following Tasio’s cunning stratagem, Don Filipo sacrificed his amor

propio (love for self) by superficially presenting and urging the approval of a luxurious budget plan (the

usual agenda pushed by conservatives in and the parish priest of San Diego) which go against his and his

allies’ actual enlightened stance – a lean budget that minimizes expenses for trivialities and allots savings

for the construction of San Diego’s school house. Tasio theorized that since the conservatives share a

permanent collective loathing for Don Filipo, the leader of their ideological enemies, they would be

foolish enough to instantly reject any proposal voiced out by the vice-mayor, even if it resembles their

own plan. While “repressing a smile,” Don Filipo began his speech: “We have 3,500 pesos at our

disposal. Now then, with that amount, we can put on a fiesta that will eclipse in magnificence all that

have been seen so far, whether in our province or in neighboring ones.”

Rizal sarcastically scoffed at the official pomposity of the clergy-led Spanish hegemony in a land

of sprawling hunger and poverty, a defect that seems to afflict even recent civilian-led Philippine

administrations. It is tempting to imagine how Don Filipo might react with lampposts acquired at a

whopping 202,777 pesos each or instant noodles bought for 22 pesos each, to mention just two of the

most outrageously corrupt deals consummated in the Philippines in recent years. Don Filipo continued his

charade by lampooning the official pomposity of the colonial government buttressed by brainwashed

conservatives: “Mr. Secretary, put down 200 pesos for the stage. I propose that the Tondo comedy troupe

be contracted for performances on seven consecutive nights...at 200 pesos each make 1,400...I propose

also a great fireworks display...We want firecrackers and colossal rockets...200 super-firecrackers at two

pesos each and 200 rockets at the same price...I propose...that every day 200 fried chickens, 100 stuffed

capons, and fifty roast pigs be thrown into the lake...”

In Chapter 24 of Noli Me Tangere, Don Filipo bitterly confronts the alferez or lieutenant in

charge of San Diego for a draconian move done by foolish civil guards: “Your soldiers arrested her. They

marched her through the town because of something having to do with her sons...” While highlighting the

Spanish hegemony’s high-handedness, Don Filipo’s lament over Sisa’s illegal arrest also evokes

memories of human rights advocates and civil libertarians like Senators Jose Diokno and Lorenzo Tañada

who fought the Marcos dictatorship with all the words, courage and wisdom that they can muster. In the

same chapter, Don Filipo balked at the civil guards’ arbitrary search and de-facto gate-crashing at the

party sponsored by Crisostomo Ibarra. The civil guards rudely interrupted the party to look for a certain

“Elias” whom they describe as “of ill repute,” e.g. a subversive, whose written description they carry with

him. Don Filipo condemned their arrogance and suggested that their haste might become an unnecessary

waste thus: “Now, look here, that description would fit nine-tenths of the natives. You might be making a

mistake.” Daring to go against the powerful military establishment then and now is a sure sign of counter-

hegemonic thought.

Standing by the people’s right to uninterrupted entertainment against the authorities’ foolish

might, Don Filipo proved his mettle again in Chapter 40 of Noli Me Tangere’s original edition. Forced by

Fray Salvi to eject Crisostomo Ibarra (who has been excommunicated for attempting to kill Fray Damaso)

from one of the seats in the street theater, Don Filipo calmly stood his ground: “I am sorry, I cannot

oblige your Reverence. Mr. Ibarra is one of the most generous contributors to the festivities, and he has a

right to be here so long as he does not disturb the public order...I am extremely sorry but I cannot throw

anybody out.” Later, two soldiers came to stop the show “because our C.O. and his wife have had a fight,

and they can’t get to sleep,” to which Don Filipo said: “Tell your C.O. that we have a permit from the

Provincial Governor, and that nobody here can countermand it, not even the Mayor himself, who is my

only superior.” Here, Rizal through Don Filipo asserts civilian supremacy over the abusive and capricious

military, a concept that remains relevant in these times of increasing military encroachment in the

supposedly civilian-dominated democratic forms of governance.

Not Your Ordinary Young Man: An Enlightened Neighborhood Leader

When Don Filipo’s luxurious plan for the feast day was defeated, a young neighborhood leader

stood up to articulate the genuine proposals of the liberals which boil down to cost-cutting measures to

save money for the construction of a school house in San Diego. The young man began to lay down his

proposal thus: “My plan, gentleman can be reduced to this: we must think up new entertainments that are

out of the common run...and we must see to it that the money that has been raised does not leave our town

or is spent vainly on fireworks, but employed in something useful to all.” Through the young man’s

words, Rizal is echoing his stance against the cultural hegemony of Spaniards that kept Filipinos drunken

with the potent potion of absurdist, romanticist and/or fantastic tales in the form of Western-themed

moro-moros11. He’s against filling the minds of the masses with fantastic stories about “kings of Bohemia

and Granada...princesses who go into battle...or else wandering forlorn in mountain and vale as if under

the spell of a sorcerer.”

The national hero through the young neighborhood leader’s words voiced out his desired

entertainment for the people: “Would it not be a thousand times better to present a picture of our own

customs and traditions, so that we may thus understand and correct our vices and defects, and extol our

virtues?” To fulfill this aim, the young man offered to facilitate the smooth conduct of the comedy The

Mayor’s Election and a play based on the indigenous tale of Maria Makiling. On their face value, these

plays seem to be more concrete in the sense that they mirror Philippine society better than tiresome moro-

moros. Thus, at the very least, these entertainment provides more opportunities for Filipinos to

“understand and correct” their “vices and defects” and “extol” their “virtues.” Rizal – through the young

neighborhood leader – tries to emphasize the need to nurture Philippine culture, the compelling necessity

of forming an enlightened and independent Filipino identity. He knows that Filipinos are different from

Spaniards, thus they must preserve their culture through promoting and nurturing it even during

traditional feast days (which is part of the Spanish colonization’s legacy).

But the young neighborhood leader, which of course is just one incarnation of Rizal’s brilliant

mind, didn’t stop at promoting Philippine culture and shunning Westernized entertainment. Like

enlightened non-government agencies in the Philippines today, the young man also advocates the

rectification of the government’s fiscal priorities. Instead of pompous feast days and much fleeting

entertainment, he aired these progressive proposals: “A fifth part of the money raised could be utilized to

award prizes: for instance, to the best schoolboy, to the best herdsman, farmer, fisherman, and so

on...With the remainder of the money, we can begin a small building to serve as a school, for we should

11 A moro-moro is a play that narrates the battles between believers of Islam and Christianity.

not expect God himself to come down and build for us.” The young leader justified his suggestion by

revealing a sad truth that certainly cemented the role of San Diego as the microcosm of the Philippines,

then and now: “It is depressing that, while we have a first-class cockpit, our children must learn their

lessons in, of all places, what is practically the stable of the parish priest.” A witty columnist in the

present times might parody this to expose the current state of the country: “It is depressing that, while we

have a multi-billion peso airport whose ceiling collapsed during its inauguration and millions of pesos to

fertilize Metro Manila and other urban areas, our children must learn their lessons in, of all places, what is

practically the shade of an old mango tree.” Rizal’s call for prioritizing education in the preparation of the

country’s budget is like a voice in the wilderness then, since as revealed by historians, all throughout

Spanish rule, schools remained mostly privately run by religious orders catering to Spaniards, mestizos

and elite indios – the colonial government just doesn’t care about public education. That Rizal chose to

voice-out progressive reforms in a time of a stubbornly conservative hegemony proves Noli Me Tangere’s

counter-hegemonic relevance. Rizal’s young neighborhood leader is the epitome of today’s Filipino

radicals who advocate out-of-the-box thinking, the outright rejection of failed capitalist globalization (in

the face of America’s and Europe’s recent debt crises) and the reassertion of economic self-reliance and

political democratization as two basic sweeping reforms necessary to jumpstart the Philippines’ march to

genuine progress.

Maria Clara: A “Closet” Patriot

In an essay entitled Maria Clara: Paragon or Caricature, Salvador Lopez (1968) initially praised

Maria Clara by declaring that “No other character in Philippine literature has had a more pervasive

influence on the thought-life of the Filipino people than this famous heroine of Rizal.” But, after

analyzing Rizal’s supposed agenda in creating Maria Clara, Lopez gave a quite iconoclastic verdict:

“Maria Clara was the forerunner in fiction of that woman who, in 1896, betrayed the secret of the

Katipunan to the priest of Tondo. You find in her the same feebleness, the same helplessness, the same

fear – none of the qualities that were possessed by Princess Urduja of ancient Pangasinan or by Tandang

Sora of the Revolution or by Teodora Alonzo, Rizal’s own brave and gallant mother.”

Chapter 23 of Noli Me Tangere might redeem the image of Maria Clara and bolster opinion on

her being a paragon of patriotism, at least a closet one. Superficially, Maria Clara doesn’t have the

modern-day woman’s bravura. She doesn’t seem so idealistically patriotic like her fiancé, Crisostomo

Ibarra (who always talk about his dreams for his motherland), but deep inside her, a strong love for her

motherland thrives. She just can’t find the right words to say it, so she just have to say I love my country

in a song, as a song goes. Asked by her friends and their mothers to sing, Maria Clara immediately gave

in, singing her love for the Philippines: “Sweet are the hours in one’s own country/Where all is friendly

underneath the sun/Sweet are the breezes from native rice fields/Death less bitter, and love more sweetly

won!/It is sweet there for the babe to waken/In his mother’s bosom; without guile/To seek her kisses and

embrace her/While their eyes meet in a smile./Sweet is death for one’s own country/Where all is dear

‘neath the sun above,/Bitter the wind for those who have not/Country, Mother and one true Love!”

Rizal’s choice of Maria Clara to deliver his dulcet song for his motherland – sweeter and more

melodious than any of Ibarra’s grandiose statements – can’t be a mere coincidence. Through Maria

Clara’s song, Rizal is able to strike a blow at the patriarchal set-up in Spanish colonies where women are

always relegated to the sidelines, confined in kitchens and bedrooms, hindered from participating in

political activities such as nationalist advocacies. By choosing Maria Clara as the vocalist of his song for

his greatest love, Rizal emphasized the pro-active and potent role of women in any self-respecting

society: the propagator of patriotism and other great loves in the hearts and minds of children who will

later become leaders of their countries. This seemingly feminist perspective of Rizal is echoed in his letter

To the Young Women of Malolos (1889): “Let us be reasonable and open our eyes, especially you,

women, because you are the first to influence the consciousness of man...Awaken and prepare the will of

your children towards all that is honorable, judged by proper standards, to all that is sincere and firm of

purpose, clear judgment, clear procedure, honesty in act and deed, love for the fellowman and respect for

God; this is what you must teach your children...Open your children’s eyes so that they may jealously

guard their honor, love their fellow men and their native land, and do their duty. Always impress upon

them they must prefer dying with honor to living in dishonor...” He went further to mention the women of

Sparta as good models in raising patriotic children.

Incarnation of the Prophet of Fire: Elias the Perfect Rebel

Elias is as enigmatic as his namesake, the prophet Elijah (see the Bible, 1 Kings 17-21). Just like

the prophet, Elias the rebel suddenly appears in the most unexpected situations. Now you see him, now

you don’t. But the similarity between the prophet and the rebel goes beyond their enigmatic entrance and

exit in the narrative. They both stand against tyranny in different times yet similar situations. Elias

rebelled against Spanish hegemony after his family fell prey to a litany of grave injustices, while Prophet

Elijah preached against the blood-thirsty and land-grabbing cabal of the evil King Ahab and her more

malevolent wife, Queen Jezebel. The prophet Elijah is known as the prophet of fire for having the power

to summon fire from heaven, while Elias, through his perfect altruism, keeps the fire of nationalism and

freedom alive in the hearts of many patriots.

In what would have been Noli Me Tangere’s twenty-fifth chapter (which Rizal deleted to cut

printing costs), Rizal provided Elias’ own justification for his passionate conviction to continue fighting

for justice even at the expense of dismissing his “special friend” and eventually foregoing a married life:

“...you know my cruel past and you know that my misfortunes are not of my own making. If it were not

for the tragic destiny that sometimes makes me regret my father and mother ever loved each other, if it

were not because I do not want my children to suffer what my sister and I suffered, and what I still suffer,

you would have been my wife in the eyes of God many months ago...”

Like the Old Testament prophet, Elias assumes the role of a “hand” of God, not the God of greed

but the God of justice, as he explains how he was able to save Ibarra from the enormous time capsule

repository (derrick) in Chapter 33 of the original edition: “...I do believe in Him (God). I have felt his

hand upon me more than once. When everything was falling to pieces today, threatening annihilation to

anyone in the pit, I held the villain beside me; he was struck down, and I am whole and safe...in exposing

the criminal to the same danger which he prepared for others...I did not kill him, I let the hand of God

strike him down.”

In Chapter 49 of the original edition, Elias reappeared as the voice of the oppressed in a heated

dialogue with Crisostomo Ibarra. He enumerated radical reforms demanded by rebels in the mountains led

by Commander Pablo, the very changes that common folks desire for themselves, starting with a

shockingly timely proposition: “...more respect for human dignity, greater security for the individual, less

strength in the armed forces, less privileges for an organization which so easily abuses them...” With

Elias’ statement, the various reports of the United Nations, especially the one written by UN Special

Rapporteur Prof. Philip Alston, on the dismal state of human rights in the Philippines and recent

revelations of Navy Lieutenant Nancy Gadian on military corruption and American intervention easily

come to mind.

Elias indicts the Spanish-led colonial government for solely using the force of arms in subduing

the rebellion instead of eradicating its roots: “It’s a bad doctor, sir, who only seeks to correct and suppress

symptoms without trying to determine the cause of the illness, or knowing it, fears to go after it...” Rizal’s

words are equally instructive to current saber-rattling and war-freak Philippine policy makers that insist

on failed brutal insurgency campaigns characterized by extrajudicial killings and abductions of suspected

dissenters and their families, while neglecting poverty in the provinces, an act that in fact work to the

rebels’ advantage far from decimating the rebellion.

Rizal through Elias also preached against militarization as a method of imposing hegemony: “It

paralyzes communication because everybody is afraid of being harassed for petty causes. It is concerned

with appearances rather than with fundamentals...A man is tied and beaten up because he has forgotten

his identity card, no matter if he is a decent person with a good reputation. The officers think it is their

first duty to exact a salute, willing or unwilling, even at night, and they are imitated in this by their

subordinates, who use it as an excuse – although an excuse is never lacking – to man-handle and fleece

the peasants. The sanctity of the home does not exist for them...There is no security for the individual...”

Such climate of fear, of state-sponsored terrorism, approximates the recent experiences of people in some

Visayan regions, Southern and Central Luzon where the notorious General Jovito Palparan has been

assigned to kill all suspected communists. Soldiers demanding cedulas (resident certificates), counting the

plates of every house, summoning civilians and forcing them to sign documents stating their alleged

“surrender,” beating people who don’t know where the “communists” are, killing peasants and claiming

afterwards that they are rebels anyway...It’s as if Rizal’s era has been duplicated all over the country

during the dark years of the Macapagal-Arroyo regime.

In the face of government-imposed atrocities, Elias offers the necessary solution: “It is true that

by ourselves we are nothing. But take up the cause of the people, join them, do not turn a deaf ear to their

voice, give an example to the rest, give us an idea of what it is to have a country.” Retorting to Ibarra’s

naive insistence that building schoolhouses will be enough to stop atrocities and gain freedom, Elias

sounded like a liberation theologian – long before liberation theology was born in Latin America – in

advocating a revolution sanctioned by God as the ultimate end of every failed reformist struggle: “Neither

can freedom be won without a fight! Without freedom, there can be no light...the struggle begins in the

field of ideas, but will end in the blood-stained arena of action. I hear the voice of God: woe to those who

would resist Him, history has not been written for them.” Mixing revolutionary fervor with idealistic

hope, Elias speaks of a coming dawn of a new day: “Our people slept for centuries but one day the

lightning struck, and, even as it killed Burgos, Gomez, and Zamora, it called our nation to life. Since then,

new aspirations work on our minds, and these aspirations, now scattered, will one day unite under the

guidance of God. God has not failed other peoples; He will not fail ours, their cause is the cause of

freedom.”

Unfortunately, Elias whom Adrian Cristobal calls as the “ethics of revolution,” died without

seeing the dawn. In his final moments, he still zealously proclaims the certainty of the dawn’s advent and

enjoins citizens to love what it will bring, at least for the sake of those who died fighting for it: “I die

without seeing the sun rise on my country. You who see the dawn, welcome it, and do not forget those

who fell during the night.” It is interesting to note how both Tasio and Elias refers to the days of Spanish

hegemony as the “night,” and speaks of the coming of a new day that will replace it. Elias literally died in

Noli Me Tangere but his zeal, the fire of his conviction remains alive in the likes of Matanglawin in El

Filibusterismo, Mando Plaridel in Amado V. Hernandez’ Mga Ibong Mandaragit (Birds of Prey), Hassim

and his sundry band of rebels in Carlos Bulosan’s The Power of the People, and even in the persons of

present-day rebels who share his passion for freedom.

Commander Pablo: Principled Champion of the Oppressed

Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere is quite revolutionary in its way of portraying rebels in a somewhat

positive light. Prior to the Katipunan-led revolution in 1896, rebels are mostly ragtag “bandits” and

“outlaws” in the eyes of many. When Rizal included Elias in his first novel, he tried to justify the

existence of rebels in relation to the existence of injustices wrought by the Spanish-led colonial

government. He shattered the myth that “those in the mountains” are “bandits” and outlaws, but rather,

freedom fighters who are struggling for a just cause. Such apparent positive view of rebels is further

enriched by Rizal’s inclusion of an old man affectionately called Old Pablo or Commander Pablo by his

followers, in his social narrative. In Chapter 45 of the Noli Me Tangere’s original edition, Elias embarked

on a long journey to reach the clandestine headquarters of Commander Pablo. The old man, wounded,

explains why they have retreated from a fight: “I had to flee to avoid the shedding of innocent blood. My

enemies were afraid to face me themselves, and only sent against me poor wretches who had never done

me the slightest injury...I shall not harm the innocent. Do you see this wound? I received it rather than kill

a poor municipal policeman who was only doing his duty.” Rizal stresses the civility of rebels as

compared with the wanton brutality of the dreaded Spanish-led civil guards. He also implies that even the

policemen, soldiers and civil guards working as mercenaries of the oppressive hegemony are also victims

of the much hated Spanish-led colonial government. Commander Pablo rationalizes his rebellion as a

logical result of injustices that his family has suffered under the colonial government and maintains that

theirs is a just struggle which will not purposely shed innocent blood.

Far from being a vengeance-driven rebel, Commander Pablo expresses a relatively clear view of

the contradiction between the haves and the have nots: “You say he is rich? The rich think only of

becoming richer, they are blinded by pride and pomp; and since as a rule they have a good life, especially

when they have powerful friends, none of them troubles himself with the unfortunate...” He issues a

scathing rebuke against rich Filipinos who, most of the times, wittingly or unwittingly side with the

oppressors in order to protect their relatively modest privileges in a colonial and even in a neocolonial

system. In Commander Pablo’s view, the rich remains an enemy unless, they, like him (a formerly rich

man), suffer as the unfortunate majority have had and be in solidarity with their struggle towards

economic and political justice. Commander Pablo’s leniency-cum-sympathy on the servants of the ruling

system is seemingly reflected in the New People Army’s penchant for “raids without a gunshot,” which

not only enable them to save bullets for future operations, but also cultivate a disciplined image of the

rebels, at least in the minds of the oppressed masses whose interests they intend to serve.

Encapsulating an Ocean of Counter-Hegemonic Thought

All throughout Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere, a diverse array of characters can be found mouthing the

author’s counter-hegemonic discourse, in various levels of eloquence, perspective and forcefulness. From

the expectedly harsh commentaries of rebels such as Elias and Commander Pablo to the surprisingly anti-

establishment rhetoric of the very people in power like the friar-bashing governor-general, the ageing

Lieutenant Guevara, the liberal vice-mayor Don Filipo and a reflective old Dominican priest, and

numerous witty statements of Rizal’s wise old man Tasio, readers will realize that Rizal’s first novel did

not only expose the socio-political realities of the Philippines under Spanish hegemony, but also revealed

timeless counter-hegemonic discourse which freedom fighters from America to Zimbabwe can utilize to

gain insights in their own just struggles for freedom, human rights, justice and democracy.

This paper tried its best to give readers an introductory view of Rizal’s ocean of counter-

hegemonic thought, but it is impossible to completely discuss even Noli Me Tangere’s wide array of

counter-hegemonic characterization and discourse. To do so might require a book or two, much more if

El Filibusterismo will be read in the same light. Suffice it to say that, at the very least, this paper might

help cement Rizal’s recognized role as a herald of democracy, a champion against tyranny, a great

expounder of counter-hegemonic thought, a man these troubled times badly need.

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