El Filibusterismo

El Filibusterismo, written by the Filipino patriotic hero Jose Rizal, is a very influential novel that encouraged the Filipino people to revolt against the Spanish authority that existed in the Philippines. Rizal began writing the novel in October of 1877, and after a few revisions, was finally completed and publicly released on March 29, 1891 in the city of Biarritz. El Filibusterismo is the sequel to Rizal’s first novel, Noli Me Tangere, but unlike the first book is more serious in nature and echoes a graver overall tone. In order to understand the novel, one must first consider the word filibustero on its own. Author Rizal reveals that he was first introduced to the word after hearing about the unjust executions of the three priests, known as the Gomburza, in 1872. Many Filipinos feared to be associated with the word because it represented individual(s) who were patriotic but eventually faced the punishment of death. Rizal, however, did not fear the subversiveness of the word and used it as the title for his book while at the same time dedicating the book in memory of the Gomburza.

El Filibusterismo, written four years after Noli Me Tangere, continues the story of Crisostomo Ibarra from the first novel who is believed to be dead. Ibarra creates a new identity for himself in Simoun—a wealthy jeweler --and returns to the Philippines with the ambitions of seeking revenge and revolution. No one sees through the disguise except for Basilio, also from the first novel, who is now a medical student. Simoun’s first attempt at sparking a revolution fails because his sweet heart Maria Clara has died; he had originally planned to rescue her from the convent. Simoun tries to convince Basilio to join his revolution, but he refuses due to his own personal views. Although Basilio is in debt to Simoun for helping him bury his mother, this alone was not enough justification for Basilio to join the cause. Basilio offers his full cooperation to Simoun, however, after being imprisoned and hearing news that his lover Juli was killed as she was trying to escape a friar’s house. Fueled with revenge, bitterness, and a debt to Simoun for freeing him from prison, Basilio supports Simoun’s cause for revolution. Simoun’s second attempt at revolution comes in the form of a bomb that he plants at Captain Tiago’s house. A wedding is to take place that day, and the Governor General and Padre Salvi are amongst some of the very important people on the guest list. Everything plays out as planned, until Basilio has a change in heart and decides to throw the bomb into a nearby river, diverting the explosion from the house. After the second failed attempt, Simoun takes refuge at the home of a Filipino priest, and decides to take his own life by consuming poison.

Jose Rizal wrote El Filibusterismo in Spanish, but did not want the book to fall in the hands of the Spanish authority. He wanted his book to belong to the Filipino people because it was meant to encourage revolution against the unjust ruling system. Through his book, Rizal wanted to highlight issues in the Philippines such as corrupt officials, the need for reform in the education system, and the threat of the growing social status of the Spaniards, while also encouraging social reform for his people. I believe it is important to praise Rizal for his ability to rally the Filipino people together for the cause of revolution without having to use means of violence. Through El Filibusterismo, Rizal was successfully able to use the power of words, and not fists, to inspire Filipinos to speak out and fight back.