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Was Rizal a Liberal Until the End? A Critical Review of L.E. Claudio’s Jose Rizal: Liberalism and
the Paradox of Coloniality (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, 89 pages)

Clement C. Camposano

This short volume aims not only to introduce Rizal to the “broadest audience possible” but also,
and more ambitiously, to provoke readers and future writers into thinking “about the horizons
and limits of liberalism and its role in colonial/postcolonial contexts” (p. xiii). The author,
Lisandro Claudio, does this by viewing liberalism “obliquely” through the eyes of “one of
colonial/postcolonial liberalism’s earliest and most prescient thinkers” or, as he also puts it,
“through intellectual biography as opposed to didactic conceptual mapping”. Rizal, Claudio
argues, “is the ideal thinker for our purposes, not only because of his prominence, but because
he theorized liberty more than any of his contemporaries” (p. xi).

Chapter 1 situates Rizal in the context not only of the economic expansion and political
awakening of late 19th century Philippines, but also of the emergence of Philippine liberalism
through the creole intellectuals of the late 18th and early 19th centuries who were inspired by
liberal movements in Europe. Chapter 2 explores his political writings and letters to sketch
Rizal’s vision of liberty --- as “purified through pain and suffering of colonial peoples”. The
author develops this argument through Chapters 3 and 4 which provide introductions to Rizal’s
novels with his liberalism serving as a backdrop (p. xiii).

In Chapter 3, Claudio argues that Noli Me Tangere, through the problematic character of Ibarra,
expresses “Rizal’s contention that selfless patriotism and pain purifies the native liberal’s
intent” (p. 53). Chapter 4 discusses how El Filibusterismo “is an intentionally ambiguous novel…
that refuses to make recommendations about revolutionary violence, but rather poses Socratic
questions about how a people should earn their liberty” (p. 55). The book concludes by
exploring the meaning of Rizal’s vision of liberalism for postcolonies and the Global South. The
author laments “the tendency among postcolonial scholars to treat liberalism as the ‘Other’ of
their radical projects from the margins”. We should not dismiss liberal principles,

… since anti-liberalism feeds into the rhetoric of present-day dictators. The Philippine liberal
tradition runs deep, but it is always in a precarious position, especially now. For those of us who
seek comfort amid the tribulations of the present, we may return to Rizal’s enigmatic vision of
liberalism being a ‘plant that never dies.’ The liberal tradition may be in tatters, but we only
need to replant its seeds and await its resurrection (p. 76).

While Claudio admits that Rizal was a complex thinker who availed of multiple lenses, he
nonetheless chooses to focus on --- or, to use his term, “prioritize” --- Rizal’s liberalism “for
both empirical and political reasons”. It is not difficult to appreciate the author’s commitment
to liberal principles and, at the very least, he is entitled to his own politics. Claudio writes, “[if] I
seek to write into historiography a liberal Rizal, it is partly because a liberal Rizal is necessary at
a time of illiberalism”. Be that as it may, the question remains: How solid is the case for
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liberalism as having defined Rizal’s thinking (p. xii)? Indeed, how compelling is the evidence for
claiming that “[liberalism] was the overarching lens through which Rizal viewed politics” (p. xi)?

The author writes that “Rizal was without a doubt a nineteenth-century liberal, focused on key
rights such as the freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and beneficent economic
governance from above” (p. 33). It seems, however, that “prioritizing” Rizal’s liberalism in this
case involves the highly procrustean exercise of ignoring crucial evidence of his abandonment
of liberal politics, especially evidence provided by the Statute of La Liga Filipina (Estatuto de La
Liga Filipina) which clearly had an authoritarian structure. The organization envisioned in the
document was so unliberal that Benedict Anderson (2005) found it hard to believe it was
actually Rizal’s brainchild, suggesting instead it was the handiwork of Andres Bonifacio (p. 130).

Claudio’s determination to read liberalism into Rizal is such that, although admitting “we
cannot be sure of its ultimate intent” and without the benefit of any substantive analysis, he
nonetheless claims “it is likely that Rizal viewed the Liga as a new phase in the liberal-nationalist
movement” (p. 17). Unfortunately for the author, La Liga Filipina not only had an authoritarian
structure where members “[obeyed] blindly and punctually all orders”, it also sought to dissolve
individuals into the civic body. Members were to subordinate personal interests to the
collective good of the organization, and in return can expect “[mutual] protection in every
difficult situation and need” as well as “[defense] against every violence and injustice”.

A careful reading of the Statute will show that La Liga was not meant to celebrate the
individual, nor individual rights and freedoms. In joining the organization, a person entered into
a relationship not unlike that in Rousseau’s Social Contract where “[each] of us puts his person
and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our
corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole” (in Ebenstein
1960, p. 445). Invoking the Social Contract helps to explain the organization’s authoritarian
demand for obedience. According to Rousseau:

In order then that the social compact may not be an empty formula, it tacitly includes the
undertaking, which alone can give force to the rest, that whoever refuses to obey the general
will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be
forced to be free; for this is the condition which, by giving each citizen to his country, secures
him against all personal dependence. In this lies the key to the working of the political machine;
this alone legitimizes civil undertakings, which, without it, would be absurd, tyrannical, and
liable to the most frightful abuses (p. 447).

The author engages in the highly selective use of Rizal’s works. He focuses on the novels,
curiously explaining that although there is much to be said about Rizal’s other works, “Rizal will
be remembered as a novelist. … a first-class fictionist, and a second-rate historian, too prone to
letting propagandistic goals distort historical fact” (p. xiii). How is this a sound basis for relying
on the novels as the primary source of Rizal’s political ideas? Like the Statute of La Liga Filipina,
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propagandistic political writings are explicit articulations of Rizal’s evolving political ideas and
thus should also be central to any analysis.

Claudio fortunately discusses one such piece of writing, “How the Philippines is Governed”
(Como se gobiernan las Filipinas), claiming the 1890 political essay to be “[the] most crucial text
that defines Rizal’s thoughts on liberalism in the Philippines” (p. 27). He highlights how Rizal
took Spanish liberals to task for compromising much of their principles and forgetting the part
they have played in the lamentable state of governance in the colony (p. 28). Again, however,
Claudio’s decision to “prioritize” Rizal’s liberalism (i.e., in this instance, his so-called “purified”
vision of liberty and liberal politics) involves ignoring an important element in the essay, which
was Rizal’s discussion of a central problem --- the lack of national sentiment. A lamentable
omission, and symptomatic of the author’s fixation with liberalism.

The problem of national sentiment indicated a decisive move away from the Voltairean
anticlericalism of the first novel. After a period of confident belief in Progress which saw him
proclaim the inevitable moral advancement of the Philippines and the awakening of the
national spirit (e.g., in Filipinas dentro de cien años --- “The Philippines Within a Century”), Rizal
(1961a) now claimed “that every country has the government that it deserves”. He became a
staunch critic of the individualism and lack of cohesion in the youthful expatriate community
and, by the late 1880s, this low opinion of the expatriate youth morphed into a sweeping
indictment of Filipinos. He not only excoriated traditional liberal politicians but also described a
condition where the “national spirit” is in a state of infancy. He was blunt:

Concerning his country every Filipino thinks this way: Let her settle her affairs alone, save
herself, protest, fight; I’m not going to lift a finger, I’m not the one to settle things; I’ve enough
with my own affairs, my passions, and my whims. Let others pull out the chestnuts from the fire,
afterwards we shall eat it. Filipinos do not seem to know that triumph is the child of struggle,
that joy is the flower of many sufferings and privations, and that redemption presupposes
martyrdom and sacrifice. They believe that by lamenting, folding their arms, and letting things
go on as they are, they have fulfilled their duty (p. 285)

This critical theme re-emerged more forcefully in El Filibusterismo as Rizal (1961b) called
attention to the Filipinos’ lack of civic virtue, warning that independence under such a condition
will only result in autocratic rule with today’s slaves becoming tomorrow’s tyrants. Unlike in
Noli Me Tangere, the friars were no longer the real enemies and frailocracia the fundamental
problem. The real problem for Rizal was that Filipinos did not constitute a nation, now
reimagined as a civic community. The words of Padre Florentino admit of no ambiguity:

Our misfortunes are our own fault, let us blame nobody else for them. If Spain were to see us
less tolerant of tyranny and readier to fight and suffer for our rights, Spain would be the first to
give us freedom… But as long as the Filipino people do not have sufficient vigour to proclaim,
head held high and chest bared, their right to a life of their own in human society, and to
guarantee it with their sacrifices, with their very blood; as long as we see our countrymen feel
privately ashamed, hearing the growl of their rebelling and protesting conscience, while in
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public they keep silent and even join the oppressor in mocking the oppressed; as long as we see
them wrapping themselves up in their selfishness and praising with forced smiles the most
despicable acts, begging with their eyes for a share of the booty, why give them independence?
With or without Spain they would be the same, and perhaps, perhaps worse. What is the use of
independence if the slaves of today will be the tyrant of tomorrow? (p. 251-252)

This key (and glaring!) difference between the novels escapes Claudio’s attention. His dogged
pursuit of a liberal Rizal instead leads him to conclude that “[the] biggest difference between
the Noli and the Fili is that the former represents a history of creole liberal reformist past, while
the latter tests a possible revolution in the near horizon” (p. 59). In light of Simoun’s failed
insurrection, he points to an indeterminacy in El Filibusterismo stemming from Rizal’s
ambivalence towards revolutionary violence (p. 64). Here, Claudio follows Guerrero’s
(2007[1961]) characterization of Rizal as a “reluctant revolutionary” who “hesitates and draws
back” (p. 299). Yet, oddly enough, Guerrero himself seems to appreciate the clarity of Rizal’s
ethical position:

In Rizal’s mind the Filipinos of his generation were not yet ready for revolution because they
were not yet ready for independence, and they were not ready for independence because they
were still unworthy of it. When the individual had learned to value social good above personal
advantage, and when these individuals had become a nation, then “God would provide the
weapon,” whatever it might be, whether revolution or otherwise, and independence would be
won (p. 300).

The task at hand was to build a civic community. If this was the key to genuine freedom, then
the campaign for liberal reforms had in fact been a misguided and futile exercise. Rizal
appeared to have accepted this, going through what De Pedro (2005) describes as “metanoia”,
a kind of spiritual conversion, when he made the painful decision to come home despite pleas
from his family and friends. His faith in Progress undermined, he no longer assumed that a
nation would emerge as part of the historical process. The nation had to be created. Writing to
Del Pilar in 1889, Rizal said that it is in the Philippines “where we ought to sow if we wish to
harvest”. This was the meaning of La Liga Filipina, which was Rizal’s solution to the problem of
the absence of a civic community he took pains to describe in El Filibusterismo.

What emerges instead from Claudio’s disquisition is a Rizal obsessed with bringing about a
liberal republic but whose preferred method for achieving it “[we] will never know for certain”
(p. 68). He compares Rizal to an apostle of Italian unification, Giuseppe Mazzini, who believed
Italian unity would enhance individual liberty (p. 26). But perhaps the author should consider
another, more apt comparison, as Rizal’s predicament clearly paralleled that expressed by
Massimo D’ Azeglio, when the Risorgimento finally succeeded in joining many parts of the
Italian peninsula into a single nation: “We have made Italy, now we must make Italians”
(Arthurs, 2009). Rizal wanted to make “Filipinos” --- a task that, if it was possible at all, could
only be accomplished in the Philippines.
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It is interesting that Claudio not only insists on a liberal reading of Rizal. He goes so far as to
extend the role liberalism has played in the historical emergence of Filipino identity. He argues
that Rizal’s life and works “represented the flowering of liberalism among Filipino natives,
showing that liberal principles could bind different racial groups through one goal”. Liberal
principles are said to have inaugurated Filipino nationalism since “[without] a common rhetoric
centered on rights and freedom, creoles, indios, and mestizos would be unable to see
themselves as a people” (p. 19). Claudio approvingly cites Anderson’s (1983) work on
nationalism, but he appears in this instance to have no appetite for its complex analysis of the
historical, material, economic, and cultural forces that brought about the imagined community.

Schumacher (1991), also using Rizal as “our best-documented example”, purveys a more
nuanced picture. For him, the sense of national identity manifested by the Ilustrados was
certainly accentuated by their experiences in Europe which nurtured their desire for liberal
reforms, “[but] the sense of national identity and purpose was already present before any
significant number of Filipino students had set foot in Europe” (p. 37). Evidence from Rizal’s
early poetry favors this reading. In 1870, Rizal won in a literary contest with his entry, “To the
youth of the Philippines” (A la juventud Filipina). Respectful of Spain’s civilizing mission, the
poem nevertheless evinced a Filipino imagined community in its reference to the youth of the
Philippines as Bella esperanza de la Patria Mia --- fair hope of my homeland (see Dumol and
Camposano, 2018, pp. 27-28).

Claudio takes nationalist historians to task for relying on “pseudo-Marxist boxes of bourgeois
and proletarian, revolutionary and counter-revolutionary” in their attempts to untangle and
make sense of Rizal’s position on revolutionary violence (p. 67). But he does exactly the same
thing with his forced (liberal) reading of Rizal. This is most apparent in his inability to appreciate
both the profound shift that occurred in El Filibusterismo, a shift hinted at in Rizal’s political
essays, and the place of La Liga Filipina in the trajectory of Rizal’s evolving political ideas and
shifting politics.

References

Anderson, Benedict. (2005). Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination.
London: Verso.

________________. (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of

Nationalism. London: Verso.

Arthurs, Joshua (2009). “Making Italy, Making Italians” (A review of Emilio Gentile’s La Grande
Italia: The Rise and Fall of the Myth of the Nation in the Twentieth Century). Retrieved 4 August
2019, from: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=24014
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Claudio, Lisandro. (2019). Jose Rizal: Liberalism and the Paradox of Coloniality. Cham,
Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.

De Pedro, Javier. (2005). Rizal Through a Glass Darkly: A Spiritual Biography. Pasig City:
University of Asia and the Pacific.

Dumol, Paul and Clement Camposano. (2018). The Nation as Project: A New Reading of Jose
Rizal’s Life and Works. Quezon City: Vibal.

Ebenstein, William. (Ed) (1960). Great Political Thinkers: Plato to the Present. New Delhi: Oxford
and IBH Publishing Co.

Guerrero, Leon Maria. (2007[1961]). The First Filipino. Manila: Guerrero Publishing, Inc.

Rizal, Jose. (1961a). Escritos politicos e historicos. Manila: Comision Nacional del Centenario de
Jose Rizal.

Rizal, Jose. (1961b). El Filibusterismo (L.M. Guerrero. Trans). London: Longmans Group Ltd.

Schumacher, John. (1991). The Making of a Nation: Essays on Nineteenth Century Nationalism.
Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.