Quotations

from

Rizal's Essays

To the Young Women of Malolos

 

Cyberspace (October) 2004

To my compatriot, Dr. José Rizal

The young women of Malolos gave birth to many brave sons and daughters. My great-great grandmother was one of them, and one of her granddaughters married a grandson of a Caviteño katipunero in Aguinaldo’s army. That means I am the product of a revolutionary grandmother and very conservative grandfather, but I am more rebel than traditional.

I write this letter to you because I do not find anything in cyberspace that one or more of the young women of Malolos replied to your letter, and even if they do not know it, I am writing this letter in their behalf. You have earned your eternal rest but even if you wrote “morir es descansar”, I think you died too soon because your beloved “patria adorada” is still suffering “the night of our ancestors”.

You wrote so many things that I do not fully understand yet but disturb me so very much, especially what you wrote about the hillman and the carabao. You wrote “The wild man from the hills, if clad in a priest's robes, remains a hillman and can only deceive the weak and ignorant. And, to make my argument more conclusive, just buy a priest's robe as the Franciscans wear it and put it on a carabao, and you will be lucky if the carabao does not become lazy on account of the robe.”

First of all, the priest is no longer considered the enemy and the priests are now wearing ordinary clothes, so it is not easy to see if the priest is “hillman” or “carabao” under the clothes. The priest is also powerful now like they were powerful during your time but, today it is not very easy to see how they are using power because they are now wearing many robes; sometimes all the robes at the same time so they look fat and confusing.

Second, the government is made up of Filipinos but many people are now thinking that maybe the government is the real enemy because it is the many government officials called “trapo” who are stealing and they steal BIG, real big!!! “Trapo” was shortcut for traditional politician, but people use it to mean “basahan” or the rags that we use to clean the floor before throwing it away, and I think that is right because, is there any difference between “traditional” and the politicians we have now? So the government is now bankrupt but they do not want to admit it, and all the time they make people believe they are working very hard for us.

Third, “filibustero” is not used anymore for rebels and people who criticize the government. Now, the only kind of rebels they talk about is “NPA” and the terrorist gangs in Mindanao, but President Arroyo always says “destabilization” when her government is attacked in the newspapers.

Today there are thousands and thousands of schools in Filipinas, of course most of them in Manila, and the schools get fewer and fewer as you go farther and farther from Manila. So, also the quality of the school standard goes lower and lower according to how far they are from Manila. So I think maybe you will get very sad and also maybe you will be angry at the people who cheat their own countrymen. I get angry also many times when I see that our people look like they are afraid and think there is nothing they can do to change things, and all they do is pray or wait for another EDSA. And then I get angry with myself because I feel I am very alone in what I think and feel, because my friends say “ang weird mo mag-isip”. You see? Even our language is a mess, no longer Tagalog and not English , and it is called "taglish" but nobody thinks that "taglish" shows our mind is also a mess. The yoing women of Malolos took great risk asking for a school to learn Spanish, but Filipinos today, most of us only want to get diploma, never mind if we really have knowledge, and the schools give diploma as long as the students pay all school fees.

The young women of Malolos asked only for “night school”. Today all schools are open to women and girls but I don’t know if Philippine Military Academy is already open to girls. Filipino women proved already they can be excellent also in school just like the men, and two women even became president of the country: Cory Aquino in 1986 and Glora Arroyo this year. But I think President Arroyo is not one of the offsprings of the young women of Malolos because even if she has many diplomas and also Ph.D. in economics, she talks and acts like she is a “hillman” or maybe a “carabao” who is only wearing the robes of a president of a republic, not like President Cory Aquino who was very brave to fight the Marcos dictatorship but did not pretend to be anything except the widow of Ninoy Aquino.

You also wrote to the young women of Malolos, “"Did I not give each of you his own torch" which, I think, you mean they should use their own brain to think and not depend on other people to tell them what to think. But today in Filipinas, that is not a very good thing to do if you are not rich or powerful; better to hide your torch and not let anyone know what you are really thinking, just wait for the day when you find many others who think like you do. Maybe also for me, hiding the torch means I must be like Simon who will come back one day and find the many Basilios (and Basilias, of course) who will lead our sad “patria adorada” out of the “night of our ancestors” so she can shine again like the “perla del mar de oriente”. I am not really a coward but I think a dead figher is useless.

So like you wrote “All this is the ardent desire of your compatriot,” I will also say that my ardent desire is to be a real compatriot of José Rizal and not just like persons who say Rizal is their hero but do not understand what their hero is telling them to do.

Your compatriot,
magiting47@yahoo.com

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