Between Empires

Martí, Rizal, and the Intercolonial Alliance

Koichi Hagimoto

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781349462025
  9781137332950
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137324573
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

In 1898, both Cuba and the Philippines achieved their independence from Spain and then immediately became targets of US expansionism. This book presents a comparative analysis of late-nineteenth-century literature and history in Cuba and the Philippines, focusing on the writings of José Martí and José Rizal to reveal shared anti-imperial struggles.

CHAPTER 1

Anticolonial Melodramas: Gender Relations and the Discourse of Resistance in Noli me tangere and Lucía Jerez

In 1885, Martí wrote his only novel Lucía Jerez, originally entitled Amistad funesta (fatal friendship), about the story of the love relationship between two cousins. Two years later, Rizal published Noli me tangere, now considered one of the most important works in Filipino literature, in which he described the oppression wrought by the Spanish friars in the colonial Philippines. Although set in different socio-historical contexts and with distinct intents (Noli me tangere is more overtly political than Lucía Jerez), these novels have certain romantic elements in common as both stories involve love affairs between male and female characters. Their focus on gender relations as part of the effects of colonialism is also comparable in terms of how they delineate the condition of imperial power through melodrama. At the same time, an example of the intercolonial alliance becomes apparent as the two writers similarly articulate the possibility of resistance in their respective novels. It has been argued that Martí and Rizal express “masculinity” and “femininity” in conventional terms, characterizing men and women based on their physical and moral qualities defined by nineteenth-centuries societies. However, as I show in this chapter, their novels show examples of flexibility and ambiguity on the limits of gender polarities. For my analysis, I intentionally betray the chronological order of the two texts, analyzing Noli me tangere (popularly known as the Noli) before Lucía Jerez. In doing so, my goal is not only to situate Rizal’s text within the framework of nineteenth-century Latin American literature, but also to read it as a critical platform upon which to study Martí’s work. Through such a comparison, I am interested in exploring the characteristics that help us analyze the two novels in light of—and in opposition to—some of Latin America’s canonical narratives from the nineteenth century.

First of all, it can be said that the Noli and Lucía Jerez follow the European (particularly French and German) tradition of Romanticism. In many ways, love affairs determine the course of character development in both stories. The constant struggle between good and evil is shown by presenting the protagonists who struggle to fight against their opponents or by dramatizing the psychological dynamics experienced between couples. Rizal and Martí equally turn to the form of “melodrama” in order to describe virtue and morality as well as gender and power relations.¹ In fact, the melodrama was a prevailing narrative style adopted by their contemporary writers in Latin America. Francine Masiello goes so far as to claim that “it is impossible to narrate Latin America’s chaos at the end of the nineteenth century without the melodrama” (emphasis in original, 460). One of the most prominent studies of the romantic novels in Latin America is Doris Sommer’s Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (1991), which demonstrates how writers in the nineteenth century employ narrative styles and metaphors taken from European and American literatures. Drawing on Michel Foucault, Benedict Anderson, and Fredric Jameson, Sommer explores the ways in which the heterosexual love relationship in Latin American “national romances” allegorizes the political desire for the creation of a unified republic. As she describes in the Introduction, her goal is “to locate an erotics of politics, to show how a variety of novel national ideals are all ostensibly grounded in ‘natural’ heterosexual love and in the marriages that provided a figure for apparently nonviolent consolidation during internecine conflicts at midcentury” (6). Using sexual love as “the trope for associative behavior, unfettered by market relationships” (35), these romantic narratives show how an amorous union between individuals from distinct regions, classes, and ethnicities is meant to resolve symbolically the conflicts that reside in the emerging Latin American nations. As a result, these novels produce national ideologies and propose a dynamic process of state consolidation. According to Sommer, “[e]rotic interest in these novels owes its intensity to the very prohibitions against the lovers’ union across racial or regional lines. And political conciliations, or deals, are transparently urgent because the lovers ‘naturally’ desire the kind of state that would unite them” (47).

Despite the potential relevance of Rizal and Martí to her thesis, Sommer mentions neither the Noli nor Lucía Jerez. The omission may be due to the absence of “natural” elements in the two novels: they do not feature couples capable of achieving reconciliation or productivity, which is a determining factor for Sommer’s theory of national founding. Neither novel presents the allegorical vision of unified republics that is idealized through the “natural” construction of a nationalized couple. I argue, however, that both texts demonstrate the impossibility of such a heterosexual union, and that this impossibility is what creates the conditions necessary for anticolonialism in Rizal and Martí. The discourse of resistance in the Noli and Lucía Jerez is articulated not by celebrating a “national allegory” but by offering an alternative model. The romance in these two texts is not so much a way to imagine national conciliation through sexual desire as to expose the crisis of such conciliation and to challenge the hegemony of Spanish colonialism.

The (Non) National Aspect of Noli me tangere

Published in 1887, Rizal’s Noli me tangere is one of the two novels he completed during his life.² The Latin title of the book, which means “do not touch me” in English, is originally taken from the Gospel of St. John in which Jesus, upon rising from the dead, admonishes Mary Magdalen that she may not yet touch him (John 20:17). At the same time, the title also refers to Rizal’s ophthalmological practice because the physician’s healing “touch” can cause pain to the patient’s disease. In the novel, Rizal’s fundamental intent is to warn the Spanish authority to stop harassing the Philippines and to end colonial exploitation. Written in Spanish rather than Tagalog, the local vernacular, Noli me tangere is principally intended for the Spanish-speaking readership in the metropolis as well as the friars in rural areas. After its publication, the novel was immediately censored by the colonial government, who believed that it was “heretical, impious and scandalous in the religious domain, and antipatriotic, subversive of political order, offensive to the Government of Spain and to its method of procedure in these Islands in the political domain” (Retana 128–129).

The story is set against the background of colonial politics in the nineteenth-century Philippines. Its characters represent the diverse population of the late colonial society—including filipinos, mestizos, chinos, indios, and peninsulares—and many of them are thought to be real people in Rizal’s life (Caudet 585). The novel’s main plot begins with the return of Juan Crisóstomo Ibarra from Europe to the Philippines, which mirrors Rizal’s own experience during his youth. Together with other Filipino ilustrados, Ibarra is engrossed in absorbing the liberal ideas of the period in Europe. Inspired by Enlightenment ideologies, he dedicates himself to bringing reforms to the country by means of education. However, he is soon confronted by abusive Spanish friars who attempt to wipe out any spark of revolution or independence movement. Ibarra is excommunicated because he assaults Padre Dámaso after learning that the priest caused the death of his father. Although he later succeeds in having the excommunication lifted, the persecution continues: Padre Salví organizes a failed plot to kill Ibarra during the groundbreaking ceremony for a new school, and the colonial authorities throw him into prison on the charge of instigating a revolt. Ibarra escapes from prison with the help of the mysterious Elias, another reformist and outlaw figure, with whom he establishes a friendship. Ibarra’s fiancé and childhood love María Clara, the purported daughter of the wealthy Filipino cacique, Capitán Tiago, offers another reason for returning to the country. However, his proposal to marry her does not produce the desired result: she confesses that her “real” father is Padre Dámaso who apparently had an incestuous relationship with her late mother. María Clara tells Ibarra that she plans to marry a young Spaniard, chosen by Padre Dámaso, in order to save her mother’s name and to avoid a public scandal, but she also promises him that she will always remain faithful to him. When Ibarra and Elias are confronted by the authorities on the lake, the latter saves the former by sacrificing his own life, allowing Ibarra to remain hidden from the eyes of the officials who believe that they are both “dead” (as I discuss in Chapter 3, Ibarra reappears as a different character in Rizal’s second novel, El filibusterismo). In the end, upon learning of the supposed death of her true love, María Clara enters into a convent where the friar who desires her is awaiting.

One of the highlights of the novel is a conflict between two male protagonists, Ibarra and Elias, who in different ways seek to bring reforms into the colony. Unlike Ibarra, who grows up in an upper-middle-class mestizo family, Elias is a native Filipino who belongs to the lower social class. While Ibarra prefers a non-violent means, principally education, to fight the colonial system, Elias, a symbol of revolutionary consciousness, believes that deploying violence is the only way to eradicate problems in the Philippines. The tension between the two characters is indicative of Rizal’s dilemma as a protagonist of Filipino nationalism. On the one hand, Rizal-as-Ibarra attempts to create social reforms in the Philippines through peaceful means. On the other hand, Rizal-as-Elias hints at the idea of a violent revolution as a possible way to end the colonial situation. Describing the Filipino author’s internal struggle, Victor Sumsky claims that “Rizal is not so much an agitator for either peaceful or violent change as a witness to the drama of choice between reform and revolution, a student of this desperately confusing situation” (240).

An example of this tension manifests itself in a discussion concerning the possibility of reform and revolution between the two protagonists in the novel. In an aggressive gesture, Elias tells Ibarra that Filipinos needed “radical reforms in the armed forces, in the priests, in the administration of justice” (“reformas radicales en la fuerza armada, en los sacerdotes, en la administración de justicia”) (269). Ibarra, on the other hand, believes that freedom is still an impossible dream for the country, no matter how much people desire it. For him, “it is necessary to go on with the friars, and in our union with Spain lies the well-being of our country” (“es menester que continúen como son los frailes, y en la unión con España está el bien de nuestro país”) (274). In his response, Elias declares that

Don’t you see how everything is awakening? Sleep has lasted for centuries, but one day the lightning bolt struck and, as it brought destruction, infused life. Since then, new tendencies are stirring the spirits, and these tendencies, although divided today, will someday be united, led by God. God has not failed other peoples and will not fail ours, for His cause is the cause of liberty.

¿No veis cómo todo despierta? El sueño duró siglos, pero un día cayó el rayo, y el rayo, al destruir, llamó la vida; desde entonces nuevas tendencias trabajan los espíritus, y estas tendencias, hoy separadas, se reunirán un día guiadas por Dios. Dios no ha faltado á los otros pueblos, tampoco faltará al nuestro; su causa es la causa de la libertad. (280)

As I will illustrate in Chapter 2, the notions of “awakening” and “the spirits” refer to the process of nation-building and will reappear in his essay, “Filipinas dentro de cien años.” Here Elias’s discourse emphasizes the need to amalgamate the country’s separated “tendencies” under the rubric of the nation. Though Ibarra and Elias present different perspectives regarding how to bring freedom to the country, their views are not mutually exclusive: Rizal is indeed both Ibarra and Elias.

Rizal’s attitude toward Filipino independence is profoundly ambivalent. In his dedication to the Noli, entitled “To my country” (“A mi patria”), the author proclaims that his goal is to expose the nature of colonialism:

Recorded in the history of human suffering is the cancer of such a malevolent character that even minor contact causes irritation and produces the sharpest pains.

Regístrase en la historia de los padecimientos humanos un cáncer de un carácter tan maligno, que el menor contacto le irrita y despierta en él agudísimos dolores. (IX)

When diagnosed with a “malevolent cancer” that causes overwhelming pains, one would imagine that the cancer must immediately be expunged. However, Rizal’s proposal is not the eradication of the illness, but rather a clinical diagnosis intended to disclose the imperceptible problem of colonial society. Both his professional experience as a doctor and the nineteenth-century turn to the concept of “degeneration,” used as a common trope of social critique, allow him to employ symbols related to disease when depicting the colonial condition of the Philippines. He undoubtedly perceives the serious damage done to the Filipino people, but the purpose of the Noli is not to present remedies for the problem. In Francisco Caudet’s words, “Rizal talks about a ‘social cancer,’ of some ‘evils,’ of ‘truths that must be revealed,’ but his denunciation is not meant to remove, but to remedy and to reform” (598).

It appears that Rizal prefers a peaceful campaign for sociopolitical reforms over an immediate independence from Spain. In the Noli, he scrutinizes the “cancer,” but the disease is neither symbolically nor literally healed. As he explains in the Introduction, his wish is to see the country’s “good health” (i.e. freedom):

Because I desire your good health, which is ours, and because I seek the best treatment for you, I will do with you what the ancients did with their sick: to expose them on the steps of their temple so that everyone who came to invoke the divinity might perhaps propose a remedy. And to this end, I will strive to reproduce your present condition faithfully, without prejudice.

Deseando tu salud que es la nuestra, y buscando el mejor tratamiento, haré contigo lo que con sus enfermos los antiguos: exponíanlos en las gradas del templo, para que cada persona que viniese de invocar á la Divinidad les propusiese un remedio. Y a este fin, trataré de reproducir fielmente a tu estado sin contemplaciones. (IX)

As a writer (as opposed to a political leader), his essential task is to “expose” the illness through literature and to reproduce its malignant condition so that someone else might perhaps propose a cure in the future (note the use of imperfect subjunctive “propusiese,” which implies probability). Rizal’s novel seeks to illustrate the reality of the colonial Philippines, but its intent does not reside in providing a solution to the country’s predicament.

It is also worth recalling that Rizal was reluctant to propose an immediate separation from the Spanish empire as he believed that Filipinos were not ready for an armed revolution. Two factors account for the extensive debates on how to assess Rizal’s nationalistic ideology as well as how to situate him within the country’s history of heroism. First, he showed his apparent loyalty to Spain toward the end of his life when he volunteered to use his medical skills to support Spanish troops who were then fighting against Cubans (the significance of this moment will be discussed in Chapter 3). Second, while waiting for his eventual death sentence in 1896, he condemned the uprising in the Philippines, which was led by a more militant leader, Andrés Bonifacio, and his organization called Katipunan.³ Rizal’s opposition to the timing of the revolution becomes evident in his “Manifiesto a algunos filipinos” (Manifesto to some Filipinos), written during his incarceration in Fort Santiago. In the text, Rizal declares that:

From the very beginning, when I heard the news of what they were planning, I opposed it. I fought and showed its absolute impossibility. This is the truth, and there are witnesses to my words. I was convinced that the idea was completely absurd and, what was worse, disastrous.

Desde un principio, cuando tuve noticia de lo que se proyectaba, me opuse á ello, lo combatí y demostré su absoluta imposibilidad. Esta es la verdad, y viven los testigos de mis palabras. Estaba convencido de que la idea era altamente absurda, y, lo que era peor, funesta.

(quoted in Retana 374)

He exhorts his countrymen to abandon their arms and stop the insurrection, which he calls “absurd,” “disastrous,” and “savage.” For him, the revolution was untimely, and what the country needed was a better educational system and more political representation in the metropolis so that Filipinos would be given equal rights as the Spaniards.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to read the above manifesto according to the pressing circumstances under which...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Phantoms of José Martí and José Rizal
• 1. Anticolonial Melodramas: Gender Relations and the Discourse of Resistance in Noli me tangere and Lucía Jerez
• 2. Theatrical Performance in the Manifesto: Comparative Analysis of Martí’s “Manifiesto de Montecristi” and Rizal’s “Filipinas dentro de cien años”
• 3. Cuban and Filipino Calibans Confront the Modern Empire
• 4. Conversations across the Pacific: Masonry, Epistolary, and Journal Writing
• Afterword
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index