Insights on La Solidaridad

• Freedom of the press

  The fundamental principle that communication and expression through various media, including printed and electronic media, especially published materials, should be considered a right to be exercised freely
• The Propaganda Movement encompassed the activities of a group of Filipinos who called for political reforms in their land in the late 19th century, and produced books, leaflets, and newspaper articles to educate others about their goals and issues they were trying to solve
• Aims of the Propagandists

  • Reinstate the former representation of the Philippines in the Cortes Generales or Spanish Parliament
  • Secularize the clergy
  • Legalize Spanish and Filipino equality
  • Reestablish Spanish citizenship for Filipinos
  • Reestablish the Philippines as a province of Spain
  • Abolish polo y servicios and the bandala
  • Guarantee basic civil freedoms
  • Provide equal opportunity for Filipinos and Spanish to enter government service
• La Solidaridad has been recognized as the central text of the Propaganda Movement
• The propagandists were a group of individuals that generally supported the political projects undertaken by the Filipinos living, working, organizing, and writing mostly in the Spanish peninsula
• The newspaper La Solidaridad was distributed in the colony
• Newspapers published in the Philippines were subject to censorship and limited the possible scope and strength of their political content and commentary
• Several of these papers were bilingual (Spanish and Tagalog or Ilocano)
• Some newspapers of late Spanish colonial Manila were more politically contentious than has been generally recognized, and that they were also instruments of propaganda, and should be considered as such along with the writings more commonly associated with the Propaganda Movement
• ISABELO DELOS REYES played an important role
• Prior to the 1840's, the Philippines was home to few periodicals
• Manila became the 1st port in the archipelago to be formally opened to foreign trade in 1834, which inaugurated an era in which print culture expanded in the Philippines
• From 1860s until around 1880, newspapers in Manila, with one exception, were printed only in the metropolitan language of Castilian
• EL PASIG, (after Manila's river) the only newspaper to have been printed in any language other than Castilian; it was multilingual
• Diariong Tagalog (El Diario Tagalo) in 1882; was considered for its application to be published; bilingual Tagalog-Castilian paper
• Diariong Tagalog was short-lived; was forced to close after a few months due to low subscriptions, which the publisher blamed for largely on the cholera epidemic in Manila
• Same decade, first newspapers printed outside of Manila, in Vigan, Iloilo and Cebu
• Governor-General Fernando Primo de Rivera, Governor-General Emilio Terrero, Jose Centeno, Beningo Quiroga- carried out censorship with significant leniency
• Noli Me Tangere was allowed to be circulated despite the efforts of the Dominican censors to ban it
• LA OPINION- considered to be an organ of the liberal administration and readers were progressivists/ progressives
• Progressives: among those organizing around political reforms and challenges to the Catholic Church's control, including the 1888 petition and demonstration calling for the expulsion of friar orders from the colony
• Terrero's administration: new censorship law was promulgated that required provincial periodicals to be subjected to Manila's approval; after a controversial set of articles had appeared in Iloilo, which was subjected only to local censorship
• Governor-General Valeriano Weyler- more repressive atmosphere but it did not slow the pace of periodical publishing
• Nine (9) new periodicals began to be published; the following year, periodicals rose to 13
• Governor-general Eulogio Despujol- a more relaxed approach to censorship of the press
• As surviving records show, occasionally, newspapers' editors failed to pass their copy by the censors in advance of publication, as was required by law, an offence typically punished with a fine and less often, with an order to cease production for a certain number of days
• Isabelo delos Reyes

  Born in 1864 in Vigan, identified himself as Ilocano, was also from a family classified as Chinese Mestizo
• Entered the newspaper world in 1881 with an article about the attack on Manila by a 16th century Chinese pirate (The loyalty of the Ilocanos to Spain)
• Wrote on Ilocano folklore
• Wrote articles using varied pseudonyms (ex: J. Simon, Toning)
• El Ilocano: bilingual newspaper (Castilian and Ilocano); used Jose Simon and Angel Benito; 1st Filipino newspaper printed in a Filipino vernacular
• LA ILUSTRACION FILIPINA: Filipino Enlightenment or Enlightenment of the Philippines; another bilingual newspaper; a vehicle to the education and enlightenment of the Philippines and of the Filipinos
• EL MUNICIPIO FILIPINO- final Manila-based newspaper; objective was to popularize knowledge of our laws; to explain to them; to discuss them, and make them accessible to every mind, even to the most ordinary people
• Delos Reyes wrote for, and edited many kinds of newspapers in the Philippines
• His contributions to the periodical press were not geographically limited in this period of the Philippines; he also published in periodicals in Spain and elsewhere in Europe
• Many of his articles on folklore were published in scholarly journals, some in German translation
• Content of Delos Reyes' newspapers

  • Representatives to the Cortes for the Philippines
  • The Equality of Privileges/ Rights (used Kasalo as his pen name)
  • Popular Schools- advocated for secular and vocational education to be made available to those below the most elite stratum of Philippine society; training the youth in agriculture and related industries
  • Embraced the local; love for his native land; patriotism
• Pascual Poblete- 1st translator of Rizal's Noli Me Tangere
• El Resumen- 1st genuinely popular periodical of a nationalist tendency
• The contributions that Isabelo delos Reyes made to an emerging Philippine and Filipino nationalism, contributions made largely in the pages of Manila newspapers, have been underestimated inadvertently in part because of his physical location in the Philippines, rather than in Spain, during those years