Blake Clinton Y.

Dy / February 10, 2007

Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840-1910

Throughout Philippine history it has been assumed that it was the enlightened middle
class was at the leading edge of the fight for freedom against the foreign oppressor.
These Illustrados or enlightened, termed so for their wealth and exposure to western
thought and education articulated the desire of the Filipino people for sovereignty
and freedom with such verve and verboseness that eventually our colonizers
acquiesced to our cries and relinquished their claims to our land. Rizal, Aguinaldo,
Quezon, Roxas at the feet of these names are laid the honor of having paved the way
for our countrys attainment of independence at least that is what they would have
you believe. The truth of the matter is that to give sole credit to these Illustrados
would be playing in to their deceptions and doing a grand disservice to those
thousands who fought valiantly against long odd and died in the name of kalayaan
during the bloody revolutions of the colonial era. In truth the quest for freedom was
hardly a homogenous endeavor, there was no grand ideal that all Filipinos strove for
rather there were dozens of disparate groups from all walks and classes hoping to
achieve some ever so mutable state of kalayaan. The groups would sometimes
cooperate and as many times compete with one another until through many years of
back stabbing, deal making and conflict we arrive at the clumsy contraption that we
call freedom today.

This is the driving thought of Iletos work Pasyon and Revolution., the fact that
the Filipino experience of revolution and freedom is not one straight and unified
experience but instead it is the slapstick amalgamation of the millions of peoples actions
and ideals rather than the few clean decisive strokes perpetrated by an elite and oft times
overvalued few. His goal in this study, as he makes it plainly clear to us in his
introductory chapter is to shed light on those below the Illustrado class to produce what
he called A History from Below. This study attempts to give us a look at how the
masses experienced the revolution, what were the motivating factors behind their fight
for freedom, how did they go about achieving their goals and what was their idea of
freedom in the first place. Ileto accomplishes this by undertaking a historical analysis of
various texts produced during the time such as correspondences between revolutionary
groups, constabulary reports and seditionist literature and then cross referencing them
with the generally accepted histories under the scrutiny of the Marxist perspective.

In the first two chapters of his work Ileto makes it blatantly apparent that the
motivating factors for revolution by the Illustrados and the masses could not be more
divergent. Whereas the wealthy elite were driven primarily by Western political
thought and economic concerns the masses were ironically enough motivated by
religion. Ileto points out the Pasyon in particular or should we say the masses radical
interpretation thereof as playing a substantial part as to the formation of the spiritual
component of the revolution. While the elite would decry the Pasyon as a tool of
oppression by the friars in spreading a message of meekness and submission among
the populace, the masses on the other hand viewed the plight of the Christ as parallel
to their own lives and that his persecutors were likened to ironically to the friars and
elite who authored the piece in the first place. In effect the Pasyon could very well
be considered the first piece of Marixst literature to achieve wide readership in the
country, spreading a message that extolled the values of community, brotherhood and
the simple life. It then comes to no surprise that revolutions of the time would take
their lead from the Pasyon and folk tales such as Bernardo Carpio to organize
themselves along religious lines with groups being led by various self proclaimed
holy men and messiahs

Their organization along religious lines did not end there, revolutionaries also put
into practice the rituals of the ideas that motivated them to revolt in the first place.
This manifested itself in the various odd practices that these groups took to heart, the
most blatant of which was their belief in the anting-anting and the strange rituals that
each group practiced the most well known of which was the initiation rituals of the
KKK.

While our colonizers have been quick to dismiss these superstitions as

nothing more than courage building exercises undertaken by suicidal fanatics to

Filipinos this was something more complex. Throughout Iletos work the theme of
the loob is quite recurrent, essentially the Filipino sought to cultivate selfdiscipline, asceticism and prayer his inner self and consequently harness the antinganting or gain access to supernatural powers to vanquish his enemies. More so than
supernatural power the loob also speaks of a persons character and his temporal
fortunes, every victory or defeat is attributed to how well developed is a persons
loob thus a leader seeks to surround himself with objects that would enhance his loob
such as anting-antings, reliquaries and the like. A flagging cause speaks of leader
whos loob is declining while those who meet success are those who have an inner
liwanag that will triumph above all else this further bolstered by the fact that in their
belief death is but the gateway to Heavy as evinced by certain pasyons incorporating
the Garden of Eden into their scripts. Thus their followers are more than willing to
brave a hailstorm of bullets with nothing more than bolos and lengths of rope where
in such cases the elite would have capitulated and ran due to their overriding concern
for their won status and well being. It is there supreme confidence in their loob that
gives them such courage or some would say foolhardiness against such long odds.

Another trait by which such movements distinguish themselves from those led by
Illustrados is their very definition of freedom. Whereas the elite would define it as the
peace and sovereignty of the country under their beneficent rule the masses had a
differing idea on the matter, termed by Ileto as the Kalayaan Ideal. For the masses
freedom meant brotherhood, community and a return to the state of paradise similar to
that of the Garden of Eden, essentially the ideal state of life preached by the communist
ideology. This division is what hindered the Filipino struggle for independence for the
elite would not deign to help the masses achieve such a goal as it was to their detriment to
do so. In fact they would go so far as to work with the colonial rulers in stamping out
such movements for they formed a credible threat to their power. This schism was
dramatically illustrated by Aguinaldo ordering the execution of Bonifacio in the aim of
preserving the predominantly Illustrado led Malolos government. Such a trend would
continue into the American period of domination where leaders such as Sakay and
Malvar would be defeated by American forces with the aid of Illustrado traitors while
people such as Quezon and Roxas supposedly heroes today would be continually decried
as false kings who colluded with the enemy.

In the end of the more than 70 years of conflict it would eventually be the Illustrados
who would emerge as the victors and be the ones to shape the future of the country
heralding the extinction of the ideals of the Katipunan. However despite being the
defeated the more than 70 years of revolution has proven that while they are simple
folk the masses are capable of going beyond their station to attempt to actualize a
certain objective and a certain future. While majority of their movements eventually
faltered during the revolutions those that built on the masses aspirations as well as
their political and economic situations were the ones that achieved any lasting effect.
The labels of uneducated, stupid, fanatic and like are merely but methods by which
the better classes and out of the limelight put them down but as the revolutions have
illustrated it is impossible to simply ignore them. To achieve true Kalayaan it is
imperative that we listen to the voices from below.