Capitulation: Filipinas and Filipino

The capitulation pattern in the Philippine colonial experience is excellently caricatured by Rizal in his novel Noli Me Tangere through the character of the heavily curled and made-up Doña Victorina, who put on airs after marrying a lame, toothless and hapless Spaniard and who spoke bad Spanish, wore ill-fitting European costumes, used rice powder, but was "more Spanish than Agustina of Zaragoza." ^[31]

Through the Propaganda Movement that they spearheaded in the 1880s and early 1890s, the ilustrados campaigned for an end to the abuses of Spanish colonial officials in the Philippines and for the institution of reforms. But the ilustrados, to which Rizal himself belonged, nonetheless largely remained in the capitulation stage or pattern. Their goal was assimilation of Las Islas Filipinas into Madre España, i.e., making the Philippines a province of Spain, and to achieve this, they asked for Philippine representation in the Spanish Cortes, equality before the law, civil rights, cultural hispanization, etc.

The adoption of the terms Filipinas and filipino by the ilustrados - which already occurred way before the launching of the Propaganda Movement - was consistent with the capitulation pattern. It was identification with the oppressor, the colonizer, the white man. The ilustrados, like the insulares, were already very much hispanized: they lived like Spaniards, dressed like Spaniards, ate like Spaniards, talked and wrote like Spaniards.^[32] But then they wanted more: they wanted to be treated as Spaniards and to be identified as Spaniards, even if only as Filipino-Spaniards. The adoption particularly of filipino was indicative of the internalization and epidermalization of the ilustrados´ and the indios´ inferiority.

The first documented use of filipino to refer to indios appears to be in Rizal´s prize-winning poem, A la juventud filipina (To the Filipino Youth), written in 1879, in which Rizal exhorted the indio youth to be the hope of the motherland. According to Rizal himself, he and his classmates in Ateneo thought of themselves as filipinos, even though they were not insulares. In other words, as Ambeth Ocampo aptly put it, Rizal and company saw themselves as "little brown Spaniards." ^[33] When Rizal and others in the Propaganda Movement later argued that Filipino should mean all people born in the islands, it was astonishing, remarked T.J.S. George, that the profound colonial implications of the term escaped them.^[34]

In an ironic twist, the propagandists tried to give a somewhat anti-Hispanic or anti-colonial meaning to the term filipino. In 1887, Graciano Lopez Jaena berated certain members of the filipino colony in Spain for adopting an accommodationist attitude towards Spain, asserting that only those opposed to Spanish colonial policy could be considered as "genuine Filipinos".^[35] After some contestation, the ilustrados eventually "wrested" the term from the criollos. The successful appropriation, however, does not in any way detract from the colonial roots and connotation of Filipinas and Filipino.

For championing the cause of filipino, Rizal has been hailed as "the first Filipino" in the prize-winning biography by Leon Ma. Guerrero. Fr. Jose Arcilla, S.J., has contended, however, that the honor should belong to Fr. Jose Burgos, whose ideals and work had strongly influenced Rizal.^[36] But is it really an honor for an indio like Rizal^[37] to be called "the first Filipino"? The first filipinos were Spaniards; those who came after them were copycats. (Incidentally, Burgos was more or less an "original" filipino - his father was a Spaniard and his mother was a Spanish mestiza.)

Apparently applying Anderson's concept of the nation as an "imagined community", Ocampo praised Rizal for "almost singlehandedly [having] ´imagined´ or ´constructed´ the Filipino, and the Filipino nation, when there was none to start with".^[38] Unfortunately, this does not gibe with Anderson's own account. Anderson noted with some irony, in fact, how the original "imagining" of the Philippines as well as of the Filipino was not done by indigenes of the Philippines themselves:

[T]he Philippines ... by the end of Spanish rule had been imagined for already 350 years as - qua terre nourrice - Las Filipinas. But Filipino? Simply the scornful metropolitan name for the tiny stratum of local creoles: in Las Filipinas, yes, but alongside far more numerous peninsulares, mestizos, chinos and indios. Not the general name for the whole people of the patria, until the revolutionaries of the 1890s, who eventually included members of all the above categories, selfwilled themselves into a common Filipino-ness.^[39]

Revitalization: Indios Bravos

In the Philippine colonial experience, the revitalization pattern, as a mode of psychological defense and identity development, was not as pronounced as the capitulation pattern. Nonetheless it did manifest itself. For instance, Rizal, while in Europe in 1886-91, clearly manifested through his writings a reactive repudiation of the Spanish colonizers´ culture and an equally defensive romanticism of the indigenous culture. Through his novels, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, Rizal exposed the cruelty and decadence of the Spanish colonial system in the Philippines. Through his edition of Antonio de Morga´s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (History of the Philippine Islands), on the other hand, Rizal sought to awaken among his compatriots a consciousness of their past. In his copious annotations to Morga´s piece, Rizal showed the advanced level achieved by pre-colonial Filipino society and portrayed the destructive effects of colonization on that society, contrasting each point Morga raised regarding the achievements of pre-Hispanic Filipinos with its subsequent decline.^[40] Rizal pursued the same theme in some of his essays during the period. In "Filipinas dentro de cien años" (The Philippines a Century Hence), Rizal lamented the westernization and degradation of the indios and the loss of their ancient traditions, writings, laws, songs and poems as a result of Spanish colonization. In "Sobre la indolencia del Filipino" (On the Indolence of Filipinos), Rizal defensively explained why indios were "indolent", a racist slur that Spanish colonial authorities often uttered.^[41] According to him, the indios had been industrious before the coming of the Spaniards. Evidence of this was that mining, agriculture and commerce had flourished. During the Spanish colonial period, however, all these were destroyed by Spanish oppression and by the Dutch and Moro wars.

Rizal was by no means the first indio to explore the Philippines´ pre-Hispanic past. Isabelo de los Reyes, the founder of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente (Philippine Independent Church), wrote newspaper articles on this, which were later compiled into a book. De los Reyes´ writings, however, cannot be regarded as indicative of the revitalization pattern, since he made "little overt attempt to glorify the Filipino colonial past",^[42] to paint it as some sort of a golden age, as Rizal did. Neither are Pedro Paterno´s works denotative of revitalization. In his books on the Philippines´ pre-colonial past, Paterno did extol pre-Hispanic civilization but he still accepted Spanish culture as the norm and he still held on to the ilustrados´ assimilationist goal. Although he rejected the racial superiority of the colonizers, his frame of reference remained "fundamentally colonial, in which the metropolis provided the standard to measure the cultural achievement of the colonized." ^[43]

The revitalization pattern was shown not just in Rizal´s writings. While still in Europe, Rizal suggested to his compatriots that instead of resenting the derogatory term indio, they ought to take pride in their race. Thus, he organized Indios Bravos to inspire greater self-dedication among indios in Europe and to stimulate the education of those at home.^[44] Rizal´s "proud-to-be-indio" phase roughly corresponds to Fanon´s "proud-to-be-Negro" phase, the period of the latter´s indulging in the romantic nationalism of Martinique negritude.

Radicalization: Katagalugan

The Revolution of 1896 denoted, of course, the radicalization pattern. When the Katipuneros under the leadership of the "Great Plebeian", Andres Bonifacio, rose up in revolt, their goal was nothing less than an end to Spanish colonial rule and the establishment of an independent republic. To signify the complete break with Spanish colonialism, the Katipuneros tore up their cedulas, used Tagalog instead of Spanish as their medium of communication, adopted a national flag and even commissioned Julio Nakpil to compose a national anthem, the Marangal na Dalit ng Katagalugan.

In this regard, there is one other important indicator of the radicalization pattern which appears to have been only recently unearthed and authenticated: The fact that Bonifacio discarded the colonial name Filipinas. On the basis of newly-accessed Katipunan documents, historians Milagros C. Guerrero, Emmanuel N. Encarnacion and Ramon N. Villegas have revealed that Bonifacio and the Katipunan actually gave the country the name Katagalugan in lieu of Filipinas and defined tagalog as the term for all natives of the archipelago. The Katipunan´s Cartilla, written and published in 1896, expressly stated: "The word tagalog means all those born in this archipelago; therefore, though visayan, ilocano, pampango, etc., they are all tagalogs." ^[45]

The Philippine Revolution of 1896, therefore, is a misnomer. When the revolution was launched, it was fought in the name of Katagalugan, not Filipinas. Thus, it actually was - or at least began as - the Katagalugan Revolution. It became the Philippine Revolution only in 1897 when Emilio Aguinaldo, the former gobernadorcillo (mayor) of Kawit, ousted Bonifacio from the helm of the revolutionary movement and had him executed. Aguinaldo, who had continued all along to use Filipinas, dropped Katagalugan. He proclaimed a dictatorial government on 24 May 1898, then the independence of the Philippines on 12 June 1898 (but "under the pro- tection of the Mighty and Humane North American Nation"). He became president of the Philippine Republic when it was inaugurated on 23 January 1899. Aguinaldo´s attachment to the colonial name is reflective of the capitulationist streak in the vacillating, not-thoroughly-revolutionary character of this former member of the privileged local elite, the principalia. It should be noted that Aguinaldo capitulated first to the Spaniards when he acceded to self-exile to Hongkong in 1897 (before coming back to the Philippines and installing himself as dictator) and then to the Americans when he swore allegiance to the United States shortly after being captured in 1901. In the light of Katagalugan, Anderson was not entirely right when he wrote that the revolutionaries of the 1890s "selfwilled themselves into a common Filipino-ness".

Even after Bonifacio´s death, the dream of Katagalugan lived on for a while. In 1902, guerrillas in the southern Tagalog area organized themselves by formally establishing the "Tagalog Republic" with Makario L. Sakay as President.^[46] Sakay himself had drafted the constitution of this republic in late 1901. Since the preamble clearly stated "We, the people of the Tagalog Archipelago",^[47] Sakay obviously was not referring merely to the inhabitants of the Tagalog-speaking provinces of Luzon.

(Bonifacio, other Katipunan leaders and Sakay were not the only ones among the country´s leading revolutionaries who had thought of discarding the name Philippines. In 1913, General Artemio Ricarte, who stubbornly endeavored to revive the Revolution long after Aguinaldo´s capture by the American occupation forces, proposed that the Philippines be renamed "Rizaline Islands" and Filipinos, "Rizalines". Ricarte himself drafted a constitution of the "revolutionary government" of the renamed country, in which he called for the overthrow of the "foreign government" and for the establishment of the "Rizaline Republic".^[48])

Even after the unearthing of the Katagalugan documents, most Filipino historians still consider Filipinas as constituting the peak of the development of nationalism in the country. Onofre D. Corpuz, for instance, declares: "Bonifacio´s and Jacinto´s concept of Katagalugan as the nation was analogous to the ilustrados´ Madre España. Both concepts were intermediate concepts that would ultimately culminate in Filipinas as the nation." ^[49] On the other hand, Ocampo faults Katagalugan for being "obviously so ethnocentric that it will not sit well with Filipinos of today" and thinks that "Aguinaldo had a bigger concept of the nation because his Filipinas included the Muslims South and the Cordilleras unconquered by Spain".^[50] Corpuz and Ocampo have missed the point or at least the more important point. Bonifacio´s adoption of Katagalugan was a big step forward in the development of anticolonial nationalism and in the process of cultural decolonization. Conversely, Aguinaldo´s restoration of Filipinas was a big step backward. Even by standards in Bonifacio´s time, Katagalugan must have sounded too ethnocentric (i.e., Tagalog-centric), but there is no denying that it was a distinctive effort at decolonizing the country´s name.

Did Rizal complete the progression from capitulation to revitalization and finally to radicalization as Fanon did? In the assessment of most nationalist historians, Rizal and the ilustrados in general remained reformists till the end and never made the radical break. Schumacher, however, contests this view, asserting that at least some ilustrados - Rizal, Marcelo H. del Pilar, Jose Alejandrino and Antonio Luna - became separatists long before 1896, and that Rizal, as a radical separatist, sought to arouse a united national sentiment of resistance in preparation for eventual revolution.^[51] Whether or not Rizal did turn radical, Schumacher correctly points out the lineage from the propagandists to the revolutionaries, how the propagandists´ historiography supplied the legitimization for the actual protagonists of the revolution. In fact, Bonifacio´s very first manifesto to the public in the Katipunan newspaper Kalayaan read like a summary of Rizal´s historiography.^[52]

"Filipino nationalism" is an odd mix, a nationalism with more than just a colonial vestige, a nationalism in which the sense of inferiority of the colonized has been internalized and epidermalized. It is the juxtaposition of the radicalism of the Katipunan revolutionaries with the capitulationism as well as revitalism of the ilustrados or at least most of them. Filipino is the conflation of the capitulation pattern´s Filipino, the revitalization pattern´s indio or Indios Bravos and the radicalization pattern´s Tagalog. (Historians have not been very helpful in their historical accounts, often freely substituting indio and later also Tagalog with Filipino, and Katagalugan with Philippines.) It is perhaps partly because of this terminological muddle that present-day Filipinos now face what Ruby R. Paredes called "the irony of Philippine history", i.e., that the ilustrados who defined the Filipino identity have been branded "un-Filipino", censured for their putative collaboration, and "omitted" from the nationalist legend.^[53]

II. ETHNOCENTRISM

As Constantino put it, the term Filipino (or filipino), which the ilustrados had wrested from the insulares, eventually embraced the entire nation and became a means of national identification. But have Philippines and Filipino truly been embraced by the entire nation?

Apparently, not by one section of the country´s population - the Muslim "Filipinos", or at least a significant part of them.

The Muslim "Filipinos", who are mostly in southern Philippines, do not feel much attachment to Philippines and Filipino since, in the first place, they did not take part at all in the adoption or appropriation of these names. At the time of the initial stirrings of "Filipino nationalism", the Muslims had remained largely unsubjugated by the Spaniards. Thus, they did not take part in the 1896 Revolution, the 1898 declaration of Philippine independence nor in the 1899 inauguration of the Philippine Republic. Aguinaldo, in fact, implicitly recognized that the Muslims had their own independent state when he proposed to the Malolos Congress in January 1899 that his government be empowered to negotiate with the Muslims for the purpose of forging a federation.

More than just feeling indifferent, in fact, many Muslims abhor the names Philippines and Filipino. Unlike most of today´s Christianized Filipinos, who do not seem to be bothered - or bothered anymore - by the genealogy of Philippines and Filipino, many Muslims feel very strongly about these two terms´ colonial stigma. Alunan C. Glang asserts that Filipino can only be applied to those who bowed in submission to Philip II and the might of Spain, that since the Muslims were never the subjects of Spain, they do not fall under the category of Filipino.^[54] According to T.J.S. George, Philippines was always anathema to the Muslims, a distasteful foreign term, since generations of them had spilled blood precisely to avoid becoming subjects of Philip II.^[55]

Philip II: The Anti-Moro Zealot

The indios had certainly fought against Philip II too, but in the Muslims´ case, there is an added dimension. Philip II was not just a colonial ruler like any other. A Catholic zealot, Philip II tried to suppress not just the upcoming Protestants but also the Muslims, the ancient foe of the Spaniards. It will be recalled that Berbers and Arabs from north Africa, loosely called moros (Moors) by the Spaniards, invaded the Iberian peninsula in 1711 [correction: actual year 711 - typographical error in original text. Kasama Ed.] and subdued most of it. The small Christian kingdoms fought back the Muslim invaders in a long series of wars that lasted for almost nine centuries known as the reconquista. At the time of Philip II´s ascension to the throne, the wealthy and prosperous province of Granada was still largely populated by the descendants of the Moors, the Moriscos, who had been forced to become Christians but who remained Moors in religion, dress, language and customs. When Philip II stringently forbade the Moriscos from persisting with their Moorish ways, they rose up in arms. Philip crushed the rebellion, expelled the Moriscos from the province or from Spain itself, and then repopulated Granada with "true" Christians.^[56]

Spain´s centuries-old war against the Muslims was brought over from the Mediterranean to the Pacific. Philip II was even harsher to the Muslims in southern Philippines, whom the Spaniards called moros, after the Iberians´ old conquerors. In a letter of instructions, Philip II expressly gave Legazpi and his men permission to turn moros who carried on commerce and preached Islam into slaves and to seize their property.^[57] Philip II thus set the stage for the Moro Wars - a long series of wars waged by the Spanish colonizers to subjugate the Mindanao Muslims which spanned over three centuries of Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines. Spanish military expeditions attacked and destroyed Muslim communities, killing or enslaving the inhabitants. In turn, the Muslims raided Spanish coastal settlements and sold off the captured indios as slaves. Through the years, the Spaniards depicted the moros as outlaws, bandits, pirates and slave traders. As pointed out by Charles O. Frake, the title of one 19th century Spanish history of southern Philippines translates as "The Pirate Wars of the Philippines against the Mindanaos and Joloanos", and another, in two volumes, proclaims itself as "The History of Malayo-Mohammedan Piracy in Mindanao, Jolo and Borneo".^[58]

In the Moro Wars, the Spaniards compelled the indios, who had been colonized and converted to Christianity, to fight with them against the moros. The Spanish colonial government and church authorities indoctrinated the Christianized natives with the belief that the Muslims were inveterate enemies of their new religion. Moro-moro plays, in which the Spaniards were always the heroes and the Muslims the villains, became part of the regular cultural fare in the towns and served as tools of propaganda by promoting a negative image of Muslims.^[59] From the Muslims´ perspective, meantime, the indios had earned for themselves, for capitulating to the Spaniards and subsequently accepting Christianity, a status lower than the lowest servile class in Muslim society.^[60]

In the light of Philip II´s stellar role in the Spanish colonizers´ anti-moro campaigns, not a few Muslim "Filipinos" abominate Philippines and Filipino. "Why do we name ourselves after the king who ordered our enslavement?" expostulates Alunan C. Glang. "It is only the Indios, who are graduated from vassalage, and had become Filipinos, who are proud to use the appellation Filipinos. We Muslims are not!"^[61] Zainudin Malang is even more derisive: "Why do Muslims resent being called Filipinos? Well, for the same reason that Filipinos would probably refuse to rename the country after the infamous World War II Japanese General Yamashita. Or, to be more illustrative, for the same reason that Jews in Israel in all likelihood would refuse to call themselves Hitlerites instead of Israelis." ^[62]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

DR. NATHAN GILBERT QUIMPO taught at the University of the Philippines (Diliman), the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands) and was an Associate Professor in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Tsukuba in Japan for many years.

He is the author of Contested Democracy and the Left in the Philippines after Marcos (Yale University Southeast Asia Studies and Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2008), and co–editor, with Patricio Abinales, of The US and the War on Terror in the Philippines (Anvil Press, 2008).

We have the following articles written by Nathan Quimpo in the CPCA library and we´d be happy to send you copies for the cost of photocopying plus postage. Contact CPCA at the address below:

• What Muslim Mindanao Really Means to Arroyo
• Contested Democracy and the Left in the Philippines
• Trapo Parties and Corruption
• Red leaders afraid Kintanar knew too much, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 28 January 2003.
• The Left and Democratisation in the Philippines
• Peace Movement and Credible Mediator Needed to Save Talks
• Balikatan: Tripwire to a Bigger, Internationalized War?, Conjuncture, Vol. 14 No.1, Jan-Feb 2002
• Internal Struggle in CPP: Sisons vs. Tiamzons, part 1 of 2, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 13 August 2001.
• Different styles, same goals: The struggle continues, part 2 of 2, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 14 August 2001.
• The Revolutionary Left: Back to centre stage?, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 24 June 2001.
• Options in the Pursuit of a Just, Comprehensive, and Stable Peace in the Southern Philippines, Asian Survey, Vol. XLI, No. 2, March/April 2001.
• Options in the Pursuit of a Just, Comprehensive, and Stable Peace in Mindanao, paper delivered at the forum Kalinaw! The Quest for Lasting Peace in the Philippines, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands, 29 September 2000.
• Colonial Name, Colonial Mentality and Ethnocentrism, Public Policy, Vol. IV No. 1, January-June 2000.
• Dealing with the MILF and Abu Sayyaf: Who´s Afraid of an Islamic State?, Public Policy, Vol. III No. 4, October/December 1999.
• Barrio Utrecht, Sunday Inquirer Magazine, 7 November 1993.
• Toward a Revolutionary Strategy of the 90s, published under the pseudonym Omar Tupaz, Debate, Issue No. 1, Sept 1991, quarterly journal of the Kalinaw Foundation, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, August 10, 1991.

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