Gazing at the enigma: A study of the contested issues on the socialist Rizal and the 1896 Revolution

Abstract

Jose Rizal, the country's national hero, is undoubtedly the most enigmatic figure in Philippine history. His short but riveting life, eloquent writings, and tragic martyrdom are glaring testimonies of his sacrifices and struggles for the redemption of the Filipinos from more than three-century brutal rule of Spanish colonialism. In the throes of the 1896 anti-colonial national revolution, however, Rizal did not simply refuse to join it; he unabashedly condemned the people's revolution that he helped fuel through his incendiary writings— as a despicable act of bandits and criminals. Renato Constantino, through his paper, "Veneration without understanding," brought forth the contradiction to the public, pointing at Rizal's Haciendero-Ilustrado origin, which was opposed to the idea of the erstwhile colony's separation from Spain and the violence in a revolution that went with it. As a result, Constantino reaped a storm of acerbic criticisms and set off enduring acrimonious debates in the past fifty years since the paper's draft was publicly read in 1969 and its subsequent publication in 1972. This study tries to revisit the debates and the contested issues on Rizal and the 1896 Revolution as it grapples with other contentions from foremost scholars on the man, digging deeper into the national hero's sources of profound inspiration from which Rizal's cogent vision for the emergent nation was drawn; his motivations, and his concrete agenda. Consequently, as the product of a review of literature, the paper offers fresh perspectives on the Rizal question apart from popular notions conceived by the Filipinos about him and the simplistic dichotomy of fitting Rizal's class with that of the masses in a Marxist fashion. Finally, the paper attempts to untangle Constantino's contradiction by locating Rizal's influences from liberalism and even from within the radical socialist- anarchist traditions, which may surprise many.