PITFALLS IN THE STUDYOF SOCAIL MOVEMENTS

We should remain constantly aware of the fact that as a result of colonial education we have hardly been exposed to the existence of a different world view – that of the masses of our people who have in thief own way expressed their own ideas about the transformation of the world. Through folk tradition, the inarticulate have articulated their ideas of justice, equality, and retribution, and their concept of what they would consider a just and happy world. These ideas, though infused with certain familiar Christian concepts, may appear visionary and even bizarre to us, bur we must examine them with respectful attention for they will give us clues to the indigenous mind and how id differ from that of the Western-oriented ilustrado.

Separate radical stream

These ideas which motivated the organization of various sects and movements were responsible for certain mass action the significance of which is not appreciated because the Western-oriented scholar is too often repelled by their strange interpretations of religion, heroes and events. There is, therefore, a separate stream of radical thought with a thoroughly indigenous base that has to be studied much more carefully and respectfully if we are to succeed in rewriting history from the point of view of the people. In examining these ideas, we must cut through the fantastic and quasi-religious integument to reach the material core of the people’s demands. Then we must place these people’s movements within the context of particular economic developments during particular periods. Only thus can we really understand what the masses were striving for.

WHAT ARE FILIPINOS LIKE?

Nothing is so difficult as self-appraisal, and to answer the question in the title I thought it best to start by asking it. With no particular pattern in mind, I asked a number of foreign friends some years ago to give me their impression of the Filipino. I was told that we were friendly, good-natured, loyal, idealistic, sentimental, socially gracious (“even the lower classes”), unwilling to accept re self-reliance, indolent, undisciplined. A Spaniard thought we were very like the Spanish; an American though we were not American enough. A Frenchman remarked we were the only people in Asia with a sense of humour, at least the only ones who could laugh at themselves, which, when one thinks or it. Was probably the prettiest compliment of all.

By way of contrast, our fellow Asians had uniform tendency to laugh at us. A Thai said we were pretentious. An Indonesian, in much the same vein, deplored our tendency to accept western standards at their face value. A Chinese thought we were improvident. An Indian was shocked by the cheapness in which human life was held by a people that could kill for a few centavos, a political argument, nasty look, or a girl’s ruffled feelings

The history of the Philippines might well be read in these national characteristics, if such they be. There is, to start with, a relatively simple explanation for our notorious lack of self-reliance, which seems to be the main burden of complaint against us. For more than four centuries of colonial rule, we were not allowed to rely on ourselves. Colonialism also suggests the reason for a certain unwillingness to accept responsibility; for too long in our history, it was not accompanied by any real authority. Of all foreign peoples, the Americans find it hardest to understand this, possibly because the 13 colonies which grew into the United States of America were self-reliant from the start. The Protestant Anglo-Saxons who began the stupendous march across the American continent at the riverheads of the Atlantic seaboard, belonged to the same race as the people of the British metropolis. They were in fact the same people. There was consequently no “foreign” government in the American colonies; beneath the forms or royal authority, the settlers were ruled by a government they could truthfully regard as their own, in which they had a “native-born” right to participate. It is significant that “native-born” is still considered by numerous Americans as a complimentary adjective, suggesting certain superiority over, say, immigrants from eastern or southern Europe. In the Philippines, on the other hand, the word “native” has an unfavorable connotation; it keeps a disagreeable flavor of inferiority, reminiscent for marrying Filipino women and “going native”.

The minor difference indicates the greater one. During the four centuries of colonial rule in the Philippines, the government was “foreign”, the exclusive prerogative of a superior class, the special privilege of an alien race. Obviously the Filipino could not consider such as government their own; they could not identify themselves with it; it was a thing apart, and more than that, a thing to be regarded with suspicion, hostility, even hatred. “The government” did everything; it was responsible for every thing; but it was not responsible to the people. On the contrary, the people were responsible to it, for taxes, forced labor, conscription, and all the varied catalogue of colonial duties, with no right to expect anything in return. The hard lessons drawn from the experience of many generations must now be unlearned if we Filipinos are to develop civic consciousness, a

sense of participation in government, and a sense of responsibility for the welfare of the country.

The establishment of an independent Filipino government was the fundamental prerequisite for the growth of true self-reliance. Nationalism had to be the mother of democracy. That the Filipino leaders of the campaign for independence were more perceptive than their American opponents, who made democracy or the demonstrated capacity for self-government the prerequisite for the attainment of the nationalist goal, is amply shown by the maturity so rapidly attained since 4 th July 1948. the successful use of the issue of graft and corruption by both the major political parties against the one in power during the early years of the Republic suggested a profound change in the climate of public opinion. No longer did the great majority of Filipino in that spring-time tend to condone cheating the government as something foreign and oppressive that deserved to be cheated. With independence the feeling grew that public funds were actually the money disapproval particularly remarkable was that, immediately before independence, it had patriotic to cheat the Japanese occupation forces, all the way from the payment of street-car fares to the sale of military supplies, which were stolen back at night and sold over again the next morning. It is truly a national calamity and tragedy that this admirable sense of identification of the people with their government has been eroded over the years by mounting cynicism.

Independence was indeed the indispensable prerequisites for self-reliance, but it is not the only factor to be considered. To hark opened up the contrast with the American colonies; the pioneers who opened up the prairies were working for themselves. The early Filipino were scarcely in the same position, and the easiest way to understand it is to remember that we were known to the Spaniards as indios. It is to the credit of the ecomenderos, to whom the bodies and souls of their subjects in the royal grants awarded to them were literally entrusted, that unlike the Americans they did not kill off their “Indians”, but worked them, many times to the point of death, it is true, but not quite. But if any profitable contrasts in self-reliance are to be made, they should be drawn surely between the Filipino “Indian” and the American “Indian”, and not between us and the descendants of the American conquistadores. On that basis, we Filipinos would come off rather well, whether the credit be given to some natural vitality of our race or to the moral scruples, military inefficiency, or economic short-sightedness of the Spanish. But to chide us with the accomplishments of the hardly American pioneers is scarcely fair. They had every economic incentive for self-improvement and self-reliance, especially after the British connection had been served.

In the Philippines, the encomendero system, which laid the foundations for a feudal economy, was further abetted by a government monopoly of overseas trade, which reduced the isolated archipelago to complete dependence on the metropolis. The American imposition of “free trade”, which was actually an tariff wall continuing the monopoly of the Philippine economy by a foreign metropolis, only confirmed the habits engendered by the Acapulco galleons. Ironically enough, we Filipinos discovered that we could survive on our own resources only during the extremity of the Japanese occupation and the consequent American blockade. We then became self-reliant because we had to, and it is possible that the only way we shall finally achieve economic independence is to be driven to it by stark necessity. Indeed, the brazen and brutal selfishness of the Japanese army taught us anew the old lessons about foreign government – even under the

guise of the Second (Occupation) Republic – that a more subtle American domination had tended to obscure. Tariff inequalities and immigration quotas were vague generalities compared with the ruthless confiscation of rice at highway check-points or the individual greed of a common soldiers snatching at a wrist-watch. There is another aspect of self-reliance which has nothing to do with colonialism and its residue. When some Americans say that we lack it, they are thinking of our family system. Then cannot understand why grown-up sons and daughters keep living with their parents even after they have married and begotten children of their own. Or why we should feel obliged to feed and house even the most distant “cousin” who fined themselves in want. This trait is not exclusively Filipino; it is common to all rudimentary societies. Modern man looks to his government for security but where the government, whether native or foreign, is still regarded as an alien, selfish force, the individual prefers to trust his bloodkin for what are in effect old-age pensions or unemployment insurance. The family is an indispensable institution in these circumstances, and one cannot be too sure that people are happier where it has been supplanted by the state as the centre of society.

Our adaptability or imitativeness is, like our family system, largely self-protective. Colonial peoples quickly learned to adapt themselves to foreign ways. The penalty was, at the very least, a kick in the behind. The reward, on the other hand, was a little more rice on the plate. So in the colonial Philippines, the man who could speak Spanish or English, who knew enough not to eat with hands or who could affect a foreign-cut jacket, had a reasonably better chance to get a job or a promotion. That the Filipinos showed a precocious ability to imitate, and to perfection, is perhaps indicated by our national male costume, which is a shirt worn its tails out. This seems to have been decreed by the Spaniards to make it possible to tell at first glance who was a Spaniard with the right to wear his shirt tails properly tucked in, and who was when he was in full formals, complete to walking-stick and top-hat. It is an odd turnabout, not without a certain irony, that this badge of inferiority has been transformed into cherished national institution, and that the white man has actually followed suit by wearing his tails out too in the fashionable sport shirt.

Our mimetism, however, had at least one more source other than pure self-preservation. Those Asians who complain that the Filipinos are excessively westernized, to the point of losing their Asian identity, forget that there was nothing else for us to be. For religious reason, the early Spanish missionaries did a thorough job of destroying all the repositories of native culture they could lay their hands on. The rationalization of this vandalism was that, like all primitive cultures, ours was essentially religious, and the ancient manuscripts were consigned to the flames as the work of Satan. Our native alphabet, so flexible and elaborate as to be a convincing proof of a high degree of civilization, fell into disuse, to be rediscovered only after centuries as a scholarly curiosity. The native dialects survived in Roman script because the missionaries, with admirable assiduity and zeal not at all common to the white colonizers in Asia, learned the language of the people instead of compelling them to learn Spanish. But all the rest had to go.

It is difficult to determine now the strength, or even the exact nature, of our early culture. But it put up a stubborn fight. Magicians and priestesses, even more than the dispossessed kinglets, led a series of sanguinary rebellions to defend the ancient altars. When the last one fell, the “western islands” – as they were called in Spain – and the

tribes that inhabited them were in a state of grace, but also practically in a state of nature. It would have been impossible to eradicate native culture completely in such Asian centres of civilization as China, India and Japan, with their multitude of gods, temples, palaces and traditions. The Philippines, on the outer rim of Asia, were an easier cultural conquest.

We were also the Asian people that remained the longest under western rule. Magellan raised Homonhon on the horizon in 1521; by 1572 Legaspi had destroyed the Muslim power in Manila. By way of contrast, Japan was not occupied until 1945, and then only briefly; China never lost its independence, and neither did Thailand; India was not annexed until the middle of the 19th century. Moreover, the westerners who shared with Spanish the loot of Asia came as traders; they were interested in silks and spices, silver and gold. The Spanish were also interested in soul, and while the Dutch, for example, were content to take their profits and leave the Indonesians to Islam, the Spanish felt obliged in conscience to justify their conquest with salvation.

Shorn of their native traditions, Isolated from the rest of Asia and the world by a strict policy of exclusion, we Filipinos had no alternative to western civilization. The American occupation confirmed it with material advantages and political institutions that seemed unrivalled by anything Asia had to offer. Dollars habeas corpus and the ballot completed the work of the catechism. As it had been since time out of mind, westernization appeared to be the key to personal and national progress, and imitation the easiest method of westernization.

It is to be hoped that we Filipinos will become a little more discriminating. But it is still justifiable to say that we “accept western standards at their face value”. Democracy, for example, was for so long a mere theory, the idealized aspiration of a subjugated nation, that our approach to its actual operation is necessarily tinged with an academic impracticality, an act of faith without good works. There is an odd feature of that faith that perhaps deserves a passing comment, and that is the time-lag which afflicts our understanding of the West. The commonplaces of the contemporary world are epigrams among us. We hail as original discoveries, theories in politics, economics, sociology and art that are already discredited abroad. Even our political slogan – “the unfinished revolution”, “make our nation great again”, “the Manila we want”, “down with feudalism, imperialism and fascism” – are borrowed, and a considerable number of Filipinos actually believed that the “third force” policy was a local invention. University professors do not tire of repeating the theories in vogue when they were college students in the United States; they have not bothered to keep up, and succeeding generations of teachers fall in their turn into same rut.

Since we have grown accustomed to borrowing our ideas, we have lost much of our capacity for independence and originality of thought. We have also developed an extraordinary credulity, often mistaking form for substance, word for deeds, programs on paper for “achievements”. A slogan is coined a speech is made, a law is passed or an order given, and we imagine that the deed is done. We are told by higher authority that a diplomatic victory has been won, and in utter disregard of the facts, we believe it, just as readily as we would have believed the opposite.

What saves us is our ability to laugh of ourselves. A lively sense of the ridiculous has helped to keep alive our sense of proportion. We are indeed the only nationalists in Asia who do not take ourselves too seriously, which explains why we strike white men as

being friendly and good-natured. We are “socially gracious” to them because we do not hate them. Only hatred can excuse bad manners. Sometimes, of course, the irreverence we have for our rulers becomes a form of self-flagellation. What other nations or other governments have does; there is a streak of masochism in our politics. But in itself the laughter is a good thing. In the past it was perhaps the only way our people could get back at the foreign ruler. For the future it should insure us against submission to a messianic despot. All in all, it would not be too far from the truth to say that we owe our faults to others, but our virtues are our own. Colonialism, through its various interpreters, made us irresponsible and imitative, improvident and even “indolent”. It made us indifferent to our responsibilities to ourselves. The wonder is that we retained out good humor and the vitality to demand the only possible solution to our troubles. We seem to inspire other nations with urge to save us, civilize us, liberate us. The Spaniards believed they were rescuing us from Islam and other agents of Satan. The Americans proclaimed their purpose to civilize us, Christianize us, and liberate us from the Spaniards and the “Tagalog Republic”. The Japanese in their turn assumed, like excellent mimics, the classic posture of saviors, and announced that they were come to free us from the Americans in particular, and white men in general. No one bothered to consult us and many Filipinos were killed by these favors. By an amazing stroke of luck, we have managed to survive this solicitude, and to learn that in the end we must save ourselves.

INHERITANCE FROM SPAIN

We are all familiar with the clichés of Hispano-Philippine Friendship, but these are only the common currency of the intercourse of nations too often inflated and debased by excessive circulation.

It is easy to say, for example, that here is a part of Asia that will be forever Spain, but when we come to examine the validity of that statement, we are immediately confronted with the intriguing phenomenon that, if only on the surface, all but the slightest traces of Spain seem to have vanished from the Philippines.

For a country was Spanish for more than three centuries there is precious little to be found of the fundamentals of Spanish culture. A new generation can read the literature of our own revolution only in translation, and when Spanish was incorporated into the public school make the measure effective. Even the few survivors of an older generation have found necessary to hazard their thought in English if they would make themselves understood in the courts and in the Congress.

As a people we have no feeling for any Spanish poetry except a few memorized stanzas of the ultimo adios, for any Spanish music except when it is adulterated by the African rhythms of the modern jazz band, or for any Spanish art except the formalized piety off religious images.

Surely one of the most curious turnabouts of our cultural experience is that the average Filipino derives his ideas of Spain and the Spaniards from – of all places! – Hollywood, and he imagines the tight and somber villages of the story Spanish plain to be something like a Mexican ranch, with grinning señoritas in swirling mantillas, dancing

tirelessly in a moonlit patio, while a torero, a flower between his teeth, plunks a plaintive guitar.

Is this caricature all that is left of more than three centuries of Spain? I think not. The Spanish legacy to the Filipinos may be unseen, but it is nonetheless pervasive, profound.

For the Filipino nation it is the work of Spain. I do not say that only because common grievances and aspirations, finally welded together the scattered tribes whom the Spaniards had pitted against

INTRODUCTION

The Philippines celebrated the century of its independence as a nation on 12 June 1998.

When the Philippine flag was raised by President Emilio F. Aguinaldo in Kawit, Cavite a century ago, there must have been pride and jubilation in every Filipino who was present. The following sentiments must have crested the waves of joy on that blessed day:

“At long last, after 350 years, our country is free from the greedy, rapacious clutches of Spain!”

“Now, the future belongs to us, as it rightfully does, from the beginning of time. Now, we can lead the happy, peaceful lives that our ancestors had enjoyed before those white rascals accidentally discovered our paradise and claimed it for their own, with their God’s enthusiastic approval, as they declared.”

“Gone is the friar, and with him, our fears for our womenfolk. Gone are the obstacles he posed to our youth’s education.”

“Gone is the Guardia civil who would hit us arrogantly if we failed to bow to him and publicly acknowledge that he was our better even if he wasn’t!”

“Gone is the forced labor, and with it, those heart-rending farewells between husband and wife, mother and son, father and children, as our menfolk were conscripted to build churches, galleons, bridges and road in far-flung provinces, or to fight the battles of our white masters against our very own brothers to return, if they were fortunate enough, after years of uncompensated toil.”

“Now, we are free to choose our own leaders and can take pride in our unity and lawful status among other nations.”

“Now, the tulisanes need no longer live in the mountains, but can co-exist peacefully among us, their countrymen, knowing that the government is now in the hands of their brothers.”

“Now we need no longer suffer from poverty; the timbers from our forests are ours to use; crops from our fields, treasures from our rivers and seas will nourish our bodies, and not fill their coffers; gold, copper and zinc inside our mountains shall be ours alone to extract and sell. Our people, especially our youth our country’s best resources shall not want in thing to do and produce. Their hands shall be kept busy, and the devil can look elsewhere for idle hands to inhabit.”

“Now, we need no longer lose our best citizens through banishment, imprisonment and public execution for political reasons.”

“Nobody shall dare call us monkeys, donkeys or carabaos anymore and treat us as such. After all, didn’t our gallant, fearless Katipuneros, inspired by the death so we can enjoy all these?”

“Had Andres Bonifacio not single-handedly organized his biggest gathering of rebels, all patriots, our very own noble heroes, this great Katipunan?”

“Had not Emilio Aguinaldo, Antonio Luna, Gregorio del Pilar, etc. shown those intruders how a Filipino can fight and make them run for their lives, all the way back to Spain, where they had come from and where they belong?”

Indeed, my generation grew up hailing the 1896 Revolution as the singular event that gave us our much-coveted independence, and with it, all the pleasant ramifications

that nationhood brings. The men who fought for this independence are hailed as great and heroic. Consider what our writers and leaders have written about the Revolution of 1896 and about our “heroes” then and now:

The Revolution of 1896“In our history, the Revolution of 1896 was a period of the full flowering of

democracy in our land. The country was not a more bitter predicament than then; there were only hardships and suffering everywhere. But the men who led the country were true nationalists and democrats who knew what Filipinism meant. To them Filipinism meant self-abnegation for the people’s weal, not opportunity to enlarge their own private fortunes. They were patriots who laved, supported and served their country . . .”

The Philippine Republic which he (Aguinaldo) shaped and led gave the Philippines its most glorious and significant epoch.”

On the Kawit event“On 12 June 1998, we commemorated the 100th Year of the Proclamation of

Philippine Independence. We cannot take from or add to this sacred Ark of the Covenant. That it was inspired and exalted is proven by its deathlessness.”

Re Our Heroes“It was nice that day to have a respite from the despairing news (kidnapping and

other crimes), to chat a while about our heroes and how their courage and their love of country remind us that we cannot go on being as morally bankrupt as we are now if are now to hold faith with what they all died for.”

“After almost 400 year under the supreme rule of Spain, Filipinos came to realize the value of being free from external constraints. The resisting and putting an end to the protracted anguish and oppression of the masses by the colonial power. From then on, Filipinos have unveiled the integrity as one nation and nationalism has loomed in the midst of every-one. . . . This occasion (Centennial) . . . is a reminder to all Filipinos of the responsibilities that have been embedded in their minds by the heroic deeds of the men and women of the Revolution. . .”

Emilio JacintoEmilio Jacinto. Utakang Katipynan. Utakang maraming sulatin at ide-ya na

nababagay sa kasalukuyang panahon “Mga magaganda at maka-buluhang Gawain din ni Jacinto ang Kasalanan ni Cain na nagbibigay ba-bala laban sa mga Pilipino laban sa kapwa Pilipino na espiya at ang Pahayag ng Agosto 1897 na tumatawag sa mga hindi pa nakakasali sa rebulusyon. . .”

“In the pitched battled that broke out between the Filipino and Spanish forces, one of the many youthful casualties was Emilio Jacinto. He died on 16 April 1899 from wounds he received from attempting to liberate the country.

“Emilio D. Jacinto lost his life for the Motherland without expecting any material reward except to see her freed from bondage.”

May the idealism and example of Emilio D. Jacinto serve as beacons for our youth as we observe his birth anniversary.”

Emilio F. Aguinaldo“A Cavineteño who dominated Philippine history from 1896 till 1935, he lived

long and witnessed the restoration of his country’s freedom which he and his generation energetically fought to regain and preserve. The Spanish scholar and Filipinologist Wenceslao Retana called him the ‘Instrument of Divine Providence,’ in that was he who led to a successful conclusion the Filipino struggle to unhitch the colonial yoke. . . Apolinario Mabini called him the ‘Saviour of Our Country.’

“Let us remember, as we commemorate the birth anniversary of this self-denying man who refused laurels to crown his achievements that he contributed much, like Rizal and the other heroes, to the formation of the Filipino people. Under him, we developed the first Philippine National Flag, the first Philippine National Anthem, and the First Philippine Republic. . . .”

Andres Bonifacio“. . .even if Bonifacio was illiterate, he was able to show his leadership in fighting

for freedom in the eight provinces against the Spanish rulers in 1896. If not for their revolt, we could still be under foreign rule. Whatever we are now enjoying we owe it to Bonifacio.” Mayor Alfred Lim.

“The Philippine revolt wasn’t sparked by the strike of bolo, but rather by a fearsome outburst of emotion by the Katipuneros led by Andres Bonifacio.

One hundred years later, what was just a land of rice field and fishponds is note a bustling commerce and trade. . .

“As the nation celebrates the centennial of its independence, we fervently look back to those years of struggle for freedom.”

And so we must. We commemorate and celebrate our Independence Day, year after, but as we celebrated the centenary of our political independence with a special celebration, I was forced to juxtapose bitter facts with the above paeans which are nothing but sweet lies.

It was not a dazzlingly bright tomorrow watching by the sidewings of Aguinaldo’s balcony, but its opposite, as that noble hand work of Marcela Agoncillo fluttered proudly in the sunshine, above a wildly cheering crowd on that day, 12 June 1898, our so-called Independence Day. We have not led the happy peaceful lives we thought we deserved even after the Spaniards had left our shores, after being driven away by the Americans, and not by the Katipuneros.

The friar is gone, yet we ourselves create obstacles to our youths’ enlightenment, and our fear for our womenfolk remain, intensified. The Guardia civil is gone, yet many Filipino still get shot at for failing to kowtow to their “betters” Filipinos like them.

The heart-rending farewells between husband and wife, mother and son, father and children, are still here with us, every time an OCW (Overseas Contract Worker) leaves for abroad. We are still not free to elect our leaders as election rgging and vote-buying have become rampant. Unity as a nation is still something to dream about as regionalism or tribalism, not nationalism, is the more familiar to our psyche.

Tulisanes, now going by the name of NPA, are still in the mountains, refusing to co-exist peacefully among us, their countrymen; even if they know that the government is in the hands of Filipinos.

We still suffer from poverty we have given our natural and mineral resources and our lucrative businesses to foreigners; our unemployed graduates and our idle for lack of jobs and devil (in the form of drugs) has found an ideal habitat in their empty hands.

We still lose our best citizens through self-banishment (brain drain), political imprisonment and politically motivated executions.

We are still called by derogatory names domestic and Filipina have become official synonyms in Greece.

Because of the above, it is necessary to pose and answer this independence? What really brought down the Spanish colonial power in the Philippines? The Katipunan Uprising or the Cuban Uprising? What is true national heroism? Is the definition of national heroism confined to leading bloody revolutions automatically become heroes even if they don’t win? Even if they sell out to the enemy? Can men who valiantly fight the overt but wrong enemy and by pass the covert but real enemy be called heroes? What really led to the proclamation of our independence on 12 June 1898? Filipino patriotism? Heroism? Gullibility? Plain power lust? Is our flag a symbolof real independence or the mere appearance of independence? Is political independence a gem or a mere trinket? Is our “independence” the freedom Rizal lived and died for? Can men who shove political independence into our clumsy hands for personal ambition be considered great? Did we have to make Rizal the “inspirer” of the revolution he condemned because we could not grasp his greatness any other way? Do we know what made Rizal greater than these so-called heroes we rank him amongst?

Finally, what will make the new generation of Filipinos rise above the country’s problems, old and new? A persistent diet of old lies or a dose of truths from new insights?

The present-day scenario and the documents of the past (even those swept under the rug) were my keys to the answer to these questions. And now I lead the reader to look open-eyed around us, just as Rizal did more than a hundred years ago, at the same time reread with him/her the works of historians, diarist, correspondents and, most important of all, Rizal’s works sans the sugar coating. And, perhaps, if we do not let our eyes and ears miss the things beneath appearances, or the message between the sugar- coated lines, and if we do not close our eyes to those do not care to see, as we are wont to do, we can do something (considering that we are now in the Information Age) if we, perchance, do not like what we see.

“June 12 must not serve to sanitize otherwise, we will continue to exist in a world of make- believe.” Truth hurts, but it does not mislead. It enlighten us, it opens our eyes. And as Doronila’s protest over Ambeth Ocampo’s exposes of past, the exposes of unsavory tidbits about our history: “If we see all these things in our past, maybe then we can see our leaders today as they really are, and in the process see what we could be.”

Truth is the ultimate liberator. Seekers of truth may be more heroic than the revolutionary leaders we have praised all these years, perhaps not for our good but to our detriment.

Let us then embark on the road least traveled that road which Rizal took – the uncomfortable, jolting avenue called truth, our only liberator.