The hero of the Filipinos

by Charles Edward Russell; Eulogio Balan Rodriguez

According to the accepted story, on the night of August 19, the mother superior of a convent-school at Tondo burst upon the parish priest at his house with information that she had discovered a terrible plot to massacre all the Spaniards in the Islands. A brother of one of her pupils was a member of the Katipunan. Assessments upon members of the order had now become frequent, as Bonifacio’s preparations drew to a head. It is an ancient Filipino custom for the woman in each household to keep the purse for the men. This young man’s treasurer was his sister. Of late he had been coming to her so often for funds that she insisted upon knowing what he wanted the money for. Then little by little she wormed his secret from him and fled with it to the mother superior, who took it to the padre.

Father Gil seems to have made one leap with the news to the Civil Guard, who arrested the girl’s brother, forced a confession from him (probably with tortures), and, taking the priest in tow, went to the place that the youth had said was the printing-office of the Katipunan. There they found, or said they found, incriminating documents that revealed the plot.[13]

Or some plot. At the best of times, as we have seen, hysteria in the governing class of Manila slept on a hair-trigger, and, being once awakened, offered a credulity more than childlike to the most grotesque creations of the most unhealthy imagination. On this occasion its manifestations were of the worst. [[283]]Such wild tales as flew about the city in those days, and had the approval of grave men that must have known better, were fit only for a group of children telling ghost-stories in the dark. That in the middle of the night armed bands of ferocious, horrible natives were to steal upon the innocent repose of every white person and slit his throat from ear to ear as he slept, was the least terrifying of these rumors, and the earliest fruitage of an aroused and exotic fancy. Curiously enough, it had no merit in originality, but was wan and hoary with age; for one hundred and fifty years, at every revolt of the overtaxed natives, it had been brought out and paraded. It even persisted to a later day and was used to frighten adult Americans that might have been deemed beyond such melodrama. Certain plans required American dislike of the Filipinos, and thus the dislike was to be engendered. In the present instance, it can hardly be necessary to say to any Filipino reader that wholesale murder was no part of Bonifacio’s plans, nor any other of the ogreish and blood-curdling designs that he was then said to have formed. That it seems needful to do him this justice before another public is only further evidence of the gross misrepresentation that interest and profits have made of all this chapter of history.

In the madness of panic for an hour or a day men may and doubtless will do strange things; the abject terror that shattered the reasoning faculties of the governing class in Manila seemed only to increase with time. There was first fear let loose on its wild charger and then its immediate reaction, the thirst for revenge. [[284]]A Spanish mob gathered at the gates of Malacañan clamoring for instant and sanguinary reprisals. Rizal in his flight across the American continent had commented sadly on the lynching-parties that disgraced the Southern States of the American Union. If he had been in Manila in those days he would have seen the same spirit displayed by the mob that demanded his own death. It was 1872 come again, but infinitely worse.[14]

At the first alarm, Bonifacio and some others had made their escape; he was now in the country proclaiming the republic and raising troops; but of Filipinos that still remained and could be accused of affiliation with his hated society there was naturally no lack, and in a few hours the jails were overflowing and the executioner overworked.

With almost the first breath of this midsummer madness, his enemies thought of Rizal. “Noli Me Tangere”! The time had come full cycle for revenge [[285]]for that flagrant insult. Days passed, and the object of their hatred lay there almost before their eyes, the broad yellow and red of Spain flapping over him, wholly at the mercy of the Government he had opposed. What hindered it that it did not seize him and thrust him into prison with the rest of the conspirators, and so to Bagumbayan and an end with him? After a time the impatient clerical party concluded that the real obstacle was Ramon Blanco. With him the friars had never been content; after the uncovering of the Katipunan they accused him of lack of energy in killing rebels, and a feud sprang up between him and Archbishop Nozaleda.[15] By common report he was now at the crisis of the play giving to the world an illustration of the folly of nationalistic generalizations. All Spaniards were supposed to hate and fear Rizal; Blanco, a Spaniard, would not deliver Rizal to the torturers because he knew the man was innocent, and he was resolved at whatsoever cost to stand between innocence and the lynchers.[16]

But if this was a worthy exhibition of virtue in Spanish character it led in the end to only another demonstration of the power of the friars. They worked the cable to Madrid, and in two months they secured the recall of Blanco[17] and the appointment of a man in his place that had no scruples about judicial murder and much thumb-screwing. Polavieja was his name. The Philippines were not likely soon to forget it.

But at the moment the victim the Interests Triumphant sought was slipping out of their hands. They [[286]]must have reflected with inexpressible rage that he would have been helpless if they had but allowed him to remain in Manila instead of marooning him on the shores of Dapitan. Yet there was a chance that he could be clutched and brought back and torn to pieces. Some news of the sirocco of rage and terror that had seized Manila reached the Isla de Panay. One of his Filipino fellow-passengers, Pedro P. Roxas, rich but a sturdy advocate of Philippine independence, foresaw what was at hand and quietly stepped ashore at Singapore, where he was under the protection of another flag. Fervently he had urged Rizal to go with him, pointing out that his enemies were certain to take advantage of the existing panic to kill him, and that as he was virtually a political fugitive he was justified in seeking a political asylum. He pleaded in vain: Rizal made answer that he had done no wrong; he would not flee.[18] He held upon his way, and at Suez the great claw descended upon him. On a cabled order from Manila he was put under arrest, and thence to Barcelona he was a prisoner.[19]

The instructions were that he was to be returned as speedily as possible to Manila for trial. He arrived at Barcelona in the morning. A steamer was to sail for Manila that afternoon. Nevertheless, for the few hours he must stay in Barcelona he was thrust into prison, the sudden reversal of the confidence with which he had before been treated indicating plainly enough to the initiated which party was now in control at Manila. By a strange turn of fate, the Spanish [[287]]commandant at Barcelona was that same Despujol that had so basely decoyed him from Hong-Kong into Spanish power and but for whom he might have been at that moment safe beyond Spanish clutches. Despujol had the hardihood to call upon the man whose life he had sold. Rizal received him with the tolerant spirit that was so marked in his character, for it is not recorded of him anywhere that he uttered so much as one reproach against those that had wronged him; and Despujol seems to have felt something like contrition as he viewed the wreck he had made of a life so unusual.

That afternoon the steamer left for Manila with Rizal a prisoner on it.