El Fili takes up

where Noli left off

Simoun
The Jeweler

▣ Had a fortune abroad and returned with the

new Spanish Governor General who he has
under his sinister influence
▣ The subversion of the regime
▣ Biggest obstacle, young native intellectuals

2
Maria Clara
Take her away from nunnery, and avenge
the ruin of his life

▣ Seize Manila with the help of disaffected

Filipino regimen and a band of outlaws
▣ Anarchist techniques at the wedding of
Paulita Gomez – lamplight

3
Simoun-Ibarra…

Now a grievously wounded fugitive from

justice, he takes refuge in the solitary
mountain retreat of Father Florentino

But… he dies there before the authorities

can arrest him

4
Basilio Espadaña Padre Salvi
Doña Victorina
5
Padre Sybila Padre Padre Padre
Fernandez Florentino Camora
6
Juli Kabesang Pilosopo Paulita Isagani
Tales Tasyo Gomez
7
Juanito Don
Pelaez Custodio
8
EL FILIBUSTERISMO

▣ Fili, as a novel, is inferior to the Noli

▣ Many of the incidents and characters are taken
from the society of the times
□ Young intellectuals’ project for an academy of
the Spanish language
□ Quarel of precedence among the guild in
Binondo

9
EL FILIBUSTERISMO

▣ First attempt of rebelion depends for its success

partly on the suburbs rising in protest
▣ Oblique references to the personages:
▣ Governor General – Weyler and Quiroga
▣ Countess
▣ Cabesang Tales

10
“
Do not be alarmed, peaceful citizens of Kalamba! None of you is called Tales, none
of you committed the crime! You are called Luis Habafia, Matfas Belarmino,
Nicasio Eigasani, Cayetano de Jesus, Mateo Elejorde, Leandro Lopez, Antonio
Lopez, Silvestre Ubaldo, Manuel Hidalgo, Paciano Mercado- you are the whole
town of Kalarnba! You have cleared your fields, you have spent on them the labors
of a lifetime, savings, sleepless nights, privations, and you have been stripped of all,
driven out of your homes, deprived by order even of the hospitality of others. They
were not content with doing violence to justice; they broke the most sacred
traditions of our country. You have served Spain and the King and, when you asked
for justice in their names, you were exiled without trial and torn from the arms of
your wives and the kisses of your children. Any one of you has suffered more than
Cabesang Tales and yet none of you, not one has taken the law in his own hands.
There was neither pity nor human feeling for you, and like Mariano Herbosa you
have been persecuted even beyond the grave. Weep or laugh in the solitary islands
where you wander, idle and uncertain of the future. Spain, generous Spain, watches
over you, and sooner or later you shall have justice!

11
EL FILIBUSTERISMO

▣ The highest official adviser, a left-handed tribute to Quiroga

▣ Even a reputed liberal like the counselor Don Custodio
▣ The native intellectuals were not much better.
▣ Either, like the eminent lawyer Señor Pasta
▣ The university students
▣ The Noli's inconclusive debate between Ibarra and Elias is carried on in the Fili
between Simoun-Ibarra and Basilio, the medical student who is dreaming of
marriage and a career. But the debate is on a different level and has a different
purpose. Simoun tells Basilio:

12
EL FILIBUSTERISMO

Rizal's apostrophe suggests the whole point of his novel: WHAT IS A

MAN TO DO WHEN HE IS DENIED JUSTICE, TAKE THE LAW INTO HIS
OWN HANDS OR WAIT FOR SPAIN TO GIVE HIM HIS RIGHTS?
▣ In the Noli Rizal had concentrated his fire on the friars ; the
Governor General had good intentions but was powerless to put them
into effect against the power of the religious Orders whom he
detested.
▣ In the F1li, Rizal indicted the entire regime including its native
defenders and supporters. Now the Governor General himself, that is
to say, the representative of the Crown and the lay constitutional
authority, was shown as no better than the friars with whom he
consorted.

13
“
I have encouraged crime and cruelty to accustom the people to the
thought of death. I fostered insecurity to drive them to seek the most
desperate solutions. I crippled business so that the country, impoverished
and ruined, would no longer have anything to fear. I whetted appetites for
the public funds.
When this did not prove enough to make the people rise, I wounded them
in their most sensitive spot. I made the vulture insult and pollute the very
corpse on which it lived……
You pool your efforts thinking to unite your country with rosy garlands,
and in reality you forge iron chains. You ask parity of rights, the Spanish
way of life, and you do not realize that what you are asking is death, the
destruction of your national identity, the disappearance of your
homeland, the ratification of tyranny.

14
“
What is to become of you? A people without a soul,
a nation without freedom; everything in you will be
borrowed, even your very defects. You ask for
Hispanization and do not blush for shame when it is
denied you ...
So they refuse to integrate you into the Spanish
nation. So much the better! Take the lead in
forming your own individuality, try to lay the
foundations of a Filipino nation.
They give you no hopes. All the better! Hope only
in yourselves and your own efforts.

15
“
The less rights they recognize in you, the greater right you will have later
to shake off their yoke and return evil for evil.
If they refuse to teach you their language, then cultivate your own, make it
more widely known, keep alive our native culture for our people and,
instead of aspiring to be a mere province, aspire to be a nation, develop an
independent, not a colonial, mentality, so that in neither rights nor
customs nor language the Spaniard may ever feel at home here, or ever be
looked upon by our people as a fellow-citizen, but rather, always, as an
invader, a foreigner, and sooner or later you shall be free.

16
EL FILIBUSTERISMO

This is no longer a discussion. Rizal is no longerdebating with

himself.
There is very little of Rizal in Basilio, except perhaps that young
Rizal who had also once dreamed of settling down with Leonor
Rivera as a country doctor.

But that Rizal was gone, betrayed for an Englishman, killed in

Kalamba. What remained was the embittered Simoun, and Rizal
is close to identifying himself with the apostle of revolution.

17
EL FILIBUSTERISMO

When Basilio pleads that his "only ambition is to alleviate the

physical ills of my fellow citizens“

Simoun retorts: "What are physical compared with moral ills?

What is the death of one man beside the death of a whole
community? One day you may become a great doctor, if they
leave you alone; but much greater will be the doctor who can
bring new life to this anaemic people.

18
EL FILIBUSTERISMO

Rizal was right in his appraisal of his own novel;

whether or not others saw his point or refused to
see it, the Fili was more profound politically
than the Noli because it did suggest a way out of
the impasse in which the intellectuals were
finding themselves, asking for reforms that
would never be granted.
These reforms were "vain hopes" that only "fool
the people."
19
EL FILIBUSTERISMO

▣ "Resignation is not always a virtue; it is a crime

when it encourages oppression. There are no
tyrants where there are no slaves.“

20
EL FILIBUSTERISMO

after the failure of the second attempt at

rebellion, on his deathbed, Simoun hears from
Father Florentino the final condemnation of his
philosophy.
Why has God forsaken him? Is not God justice, and is
not freedom also God's cause, since there can be no
justice without freedom? Why has God's help been
denied him?
21
“
“You chose a means that He could not approve.“

Simoun had sought the freedom of the people by

fomenting crime, corruption, hatred, and the end
did not justify such means. Indeed such means were
bound to be self defeating.

22
EL FILIBUSTERISMO

Father Florentino then closes the novel with

what we must take to be Rizal's own thoughts on
the issue:
Assimilation
Separatism

23
EL FILIBUSTERISMO

Rizal in the Fili is no longer the loyal reformer; he is the

"subversive" separatist, making so little effort at
concealment that he arrogantly announces his purpose in
the very title of his novel, which means "subversion", in its
dedication to Burgos, Gomez and Zamora, "victims of the
evil which I am trying to fight" but also officially
condemned as instigators of rebellion, and in the novel's
very title page with its challenging quotation from
Blumentritt:

24
“
One easily gets the feeling that a protester has
bewitched the sympathizers of the friars and the
reactionaries into favoring and promoting without
knowing his real purposes, a policy which can have
only one aim: to spread subversive or rebellious
ideas throughout the entire country, and to
convince each and every Filipino that there is no
solution except independence from the Mother
Country.

25
EL FILIBUSTERISMO

No solution except independence !

But how is it to be achieved? At this point Rizal hesitates

and draws back.

The last chapters of the Fili are heavily corrected, and it

may not have been due only to Rizal's desperate need to
cut down his work to match Ventura's money.

26
EL FILIBUSTERISMO

There is a certain uneasiness inherent in the failure of

Simoun's two attempts:
First, because of his own personal demoralization upon
the unforeseen death of Maria Clara;
Second, because of the totally incalculable intervention of
Isagani in removing the bomb to save the unfaithful
Paulita.

27
EL FILIBUSTERISMO

Nor are these accidents purely novelesque; Rizal surely

remembered the two greatest uprising within his generation's
memory:
▣ Novales's coup, which failed because his own brother in
command of Manila's citadel, had refused to surrender it and
beat off the rebels' attack; and
▣ 1872 mutiny, which failed, so it was said, because the
conspirators in Kabite had risen prematurely, confusing the
fireworks of a suburban fiesta for the cannonade that would
signal the start of the rebellion.

28
EL FILIBUSTERISMO

While Simoun was dying, Father Florentino said…

“The sword now counts for very little in the destinies of

our times, but I do say that…
we must win our freedom by deserving it, by improving
the mind and enhancing the dignity of the individual,
loving what is just, what is good, what is great to the point
of dying for it.

29
EL FILIBUSTERISMO
PLEASE READ…
“Our misfortunes are our own fault, let us blame nobody for them. . . As
long as the Filipino people do not have sufficient vigor to proclaim, head
held high and chest bared, their right to life 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 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 worse. What is the use of
independence if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow? And
no doubt they will, because whoever submits to tyranny, loves it!
EL FILIBUSTERISMO

TO CONCLUDE,
Rizal Thought that 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.