Rizal's Significance

THE SPIRIT BEHIND LA LIGA FILIPINA -
ITS CONTINUING POWER AND RELEVANCE 

By Sir Edwin D. Bael

Our nation came into being because, among others, one man intensely asserted: “In my heart I have suppressed all loves except that of my native land; in my mind I have erased all ideas which do not signify her progress; and my lips have forgotten the names of the native races in the Philippines in order not to say more than Filipinos.” (Jose Rizal, Speech, ‘Farewell to 1883’, MS)

Yes Dr. Rizal strongly advocated the idea of loving Inang Bayan for her whole progress as a unified single entity, at a time when Spain had successfully conquered and exploited almost all of our archipelago for more than 300 years through the main stratagem of making our forebears fight against each other by stoking regionalistic and personalistic pride.  

Filipino expats in Spain formed the La Solidaridad (The Solidarity) by December 1888 and published the broadsheet La Solidaridad from February 1889 to November 1895. In his farewell editorial, Marcelo H. del Pilar said: “We are persuaded that no sacrifices are too little to win the rights and the liberty of a nation that is oppressed by slavery.”

Such was the oneness of purpose of these propagandists that in a July 27, 1888 letter to Mariano Ponce, Jose Rizal said: “Let this be our only motto: for the welfare of the Native Land. On the day when all Filipinos should think like him (M H del Pilar) and like us, on that day we shall have fulfilled our arduous mission, which is the formation of the Filipino nation.”

Pursuing that mission, while Rizal was still in Hongkong in 1892, copies of the Estatuto de la Liga Filipina were circulated among trusted Filipinos. After arriving in Manila on June 26,1892, Rizal and friends organized the La Liga Filipina in the house of Doroteo Ongjunco, Ilaya Street, Tondo, Manila on July 3 1892.

La Liga Filipina sought to build a new group and involve the people directly in the reform movement. The league was to be a sort of mutual aid self-help society for scholarship funds, legal aid, loaning capital, and setting up cooperatives. But because of Spanish and Friar hatred of Rizal occasioned by his hurtful (to them) truth-telling in the Noli (1887) and the Fili (1891), the league became a threat to Spanish authorities that they arrested Rizal on July 6, 1892 and promptly shipped him to exile in Dapitan.

Sir George Aseniero, in a very scholarly published article (“La Liga in Rizal Scholarship”, Asian Studies: Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia, Volume 49:1 [2013], pp. 139-149), summarized: the Liga’s radical program was “to create a civil society based on reciprocity and distributive justice” and “Rizal’s terms acquire a definitive meaning and a theoretical unity when understood in the revolutionary semiotics of the 19th century. These terms include the motto of La Liga - Unus instar omnium (one is equal to all); its aim - a compact, vigorous, homogenous civil society arising from a federation of associations all based on the principle of mutualism and animated with a national sentiment; and its preferred form of state - a federal republic.”

As we know the Liga was still-born; but somehow it resuscitated for a while, manifesting as two divided groups before finally fading away: one wanting the La Solidaridad idea of still working with Spain and the other the revolutionary Katipunan of Bonifacio. The rest is history, our checkered history.

But what does the Liga Filipina mean for us today?

It means we should never forget, even for a moment, that our enemies - internal and external, domestic and foreign – are adept at instigating us to fight against each other, so as to exploit, take advantage of, oppress, weaken, or otherwise defeat us. “Divide and conquer” is a tried and tested, verily a proven strategy against us: the peoples living in these seven thousand and so islands.

The only effective counter-strategy is resolute teamwork from the “atin” perspective and unstinting adherence to Dr. Rizal's principles of Filipino solidarity and national unity. This is the continuing power and relevance of the spirit behind the La Liga Filipina.