FINALS

• Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas


  A work written by Spanish official Antonio Morga in 1609, which provided an account of the early Spanish colonial period in the Philippines
• Rizal's decision to annotate Morga's Sucesos


  • Morga's work was scarce in its original Spanish version
  • Morga was a civil administrator, so his account was more secular and trustworthy than those written by religious missionaries
  • Morga's work was sympathetic toward the indigenous people
  • Morga was a firsthand witness to historical events in the Philippines during the early Spanish colonization period
• Rizal's annotation of Morga's Sucesos


  Seen as an attempt to build a sense of national consciousness or identity based on a glorious past, in the context of the Propaganda Movement's calls for reforms in Spain
• Rizal's comprehensive notes on Sucesos revealed early Filipino culture as rich and flourishing, although early Spanish chroniclers mocked the early Filipinos as barbarians
• Rizal's annotations of Morga's Sucesos can be seen as an attempt to affirm Filipino identity within a colonial framework that is repressive
• Filipinos were generally labeled as indolent during the Spanish colonization of the Philippines
• Several foreign visitors to the Philippines between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries backed up this claim with their observations
• Gemelli Careri: '"It is their laziness that makes them appear less ingenious. And they are so entirely addicted to it that if they find a thorn run into their foot while walking, they will not stoop to put it out of the way so that another may not tread on it."'
• Friar Gaspar de San Agustin: '"Their laziness is such that they never close a door; and if they take any implement for any use, such as a knife, pair of scissors, hammer, etc., they never return it where they took it, but drop it there at the foot of the work."'
• Feodor Jagor: '"Someone could be sleeping on a heap of coconuts by the Pasig River. If the nuts wash ashore, the sleeper rouses himself, pushes off with a long bamboo, and peacefully relapses into slumber as his bizarre rafts reclaim the river's stream."'
• The opinions made by these outsiders resulted in a persistent impression of Filipinos as inept or essentially deficient in abilities
• "Sobre la Indolencia de Los Filipinos" (On the Indolence of the Filipinos)

  An attempt by Rizal to correct this misconception
• Rizal's essay was serialized in six issues of La Solidaridad from July 15 to September 15, 1890
• Rizal's logic


  Parallels that of Gregorio Sancianco's El Progreso de las Filipinas, published in 1881
• Sancianco fought for tax reforms in the government because he considered public funds essential for the country's general prosperity
• Sancianco addressed the subject of Filipino lethargy, attributing the trait to the indigenous' languid and unmotivated state as a result of bad economic situations
• Rizal's essay


  Directly addresses the issue of the Filipino's laziness
• Rizal does not deny the existence of indolence among Filipinos from the start
• Rizal's view on indolence


  The evil is found in the fact that indolence in the Philippines is an exaggerated indolence, a snowball indolence, as it were, a vice that grows four-fold as time passes
• Rizal claims the Filipinos were not always lazy, citing examples of their involvement in industry, agriculture, and commerce in the precolonial past
• Rizal attributes the predisposition to laziness to the constant wars, Moro skirmishes, and abuses committed by the Spaniards against the Filipinos
• Rizal claims the Filipinos' lack of education and national sentiment has only served to maintain their indolence
• Rizal states that all attempts to reform the Filipinos will be successful only if education and freedom are provided
• Despite the criticisms, Filipinos are recognized to be hardworking people across the globe
• In his essay "The Philippines a Century From Now," Rizal makes compelling arguments about the country's state in the future
• Rizal claims the Philippines will remain a Spanish colony if the mother country implements press freedom and Cortes representation reforms
• Rizal admits that if Spain refuses to grant these reforms, the Filipinos will likely declare independence after a bloody revolution
• Rizal asserts that even if the Philippines achieves independence in the future, it will be short-lived because the United States of America will most likely acquire and colonize the country as one of their own
• Rizal asserts that Spain must grant the Filipinos reform because "it is better to keep pace with a people's desire than to give way before them; the former begets sympathy and love, the latter contempt and anger"
• Rizal asserts that Spain must grant the Filipinos reform because "it is better to keep pace with a people's desire than to give way before them; the former begets sympathy and love, the latter contempt and anger."
• Rizal's "The Philippines, a Century Hence" discusses his views on the Philippines' future under Spanish colonial rule
• The publication of the first biographies focusing on the lives of missionaries who worked in the evangelization of the natives was noted in Philippine history around the turn of the twentieth century
• Early colonial Filipino biographies are accounts of Filipino fighters who were considered "enemies of the state"
• The study of biographies broadened in the Philippines after WWII
• E. Arsenio Manuel's four-volume compilation Dictionary of Philippine Biography, published in 1955, is a seminal work in the country's life-writing history
• D. H. Soriano and Isidro L. Retizos published The Philippines Who's Who two years later, a book about the lives and accomplishments of 400 Filipinos
• The National Historical Institute's first book, Filipinos in History, was published in 1965 as a five-volume project
• Gregorio Zaide, a historian and biographer, published Great Filipinos in History in 1970, which was later rewritten as Rizal and Other Great Filipinos in 1988
• Many biographies of Filipinos have been written in recent years, with Rizal's life and works being a popular subject
• Understanding Rizal necessitates understanding the historical context in which he lived, including events like the Industrial Revolution, the American Revolution, the rise of the Catholic Church's power, the opening of the Suez Canal, and the Cavite Mutiny of 1872