What is happening to our country today has been foretold very accurately by the greatest Asian writer and political novelist, Dr. Jose Rizal in his immortal masterpieces, the ‘Noli me Tangere’ and the ‘El Filibusterismo’. Our national hero has forewarned us two centuries ago of a social cancer of such malignant character that the least touch could bring the most agonizing pain and most devastating anguish.
The corruption in government, the plunder of the nation’s coffers, the oppression and exploitation of the poor, as well as the unabated abuses by the powers-that-be have all been portrayed by Dr. Rizal in his masterful literary works. But we all never learned from these dire yet accurate predictions. We ignored Rizal’s meticulous discernment and prognosis a century hence from his era. We never gave attention to the far-reaching consequences and implications of what he called the Philippines’ social cancer.
These thieving and scheming traditional politicians who dominate our government today were already described by Dr. Rizal in his masterful characterization of Capitan Tiago who, like the so-called political leaders nowadays, arrogantly wields power by sheer exploitation, oppression, and domination of the poor, the voiceless, and the marginalized. Capitan Tiago is today’s trapos who steal billions from public funds and use this money to perpetuate themselves in power.
The character of Doña Pia, Capitan Tiago’s subservient but secretly unfaithful wife is the representation of contemporary politicians’ spouses, who are neglected and even abused by their domineering husbands but who are themselves having secret liaisons with lovers, just as Doña Pia having a love child with the self-righteous and treacherous Padre Damaso. Maria Clara symbolizes the fruit of the forbidden tree, or the product of infidelity, which is the analogy for graft, which is the government officials’ betrayal of public trust.
The infidel, Padre Damaso and the lecherous Padre Salvi represent the socially irrelevant so-called religious leaders today who do not walk their talk and even practice the exact opposite of what they pontificate on. Damaso and Salvi are personified today by wayward members of the clergy as well as pastors of other denominations who use the Bible to amass money by selling the promises of salvation to the highest bidders. Many of them use the pulpit to advance their political agenda.
The bejeweled wives of senators and congressmen today who derive their ego-inflating pretensions for glory by their ostentatious display of branded bags and shoes, were portrayed by Dr. Rizal’s funny characterization of the obnoxious and even scandalous Doña Victorina, mal-educated but peerless in her shameless social climbing schemes and machinations. Well, we still have many of these wives, paramours, or kept women who display their luxury cars, carats, and cash every SONA in the house of the so-called peoples’ representatives.
Don Crisostomo Ibarra represents the bourgeois sons and daughters who were sent abroad to study and are now returning to the land of their birth, only to be scandalized by what the nation has become while they were enjoying the wine, women, and song in Europe and the Americas. These guys delude themselves into thinking that they are God’s appointed messengers to bring salvation to their homeland. The true heroes are represented by Elias who never left the land but continued the peoples’ struggles for liberation, even as a violent filibuster.
The peoples’ sufferings today have all been portrayed by Dr. Rizal in the hapless characters of Sisa, Crispin, and Basilio. They were maltreated, abused, and subjected to endless harassment and social and economic injustice by the likes of Capitan Tiago and Padre Damaso. The good guys were also portrayed in the characters of Padre Florentino and Pilosopo Tasyo. But they are few and often voiceless. Today, when they stand up to protest, they are often rounded up as rebels or drug addicts. Many of them are subjected to extra-judicial killing.
We have never taken Dr. Jose Rizal seriously. We never read, understood, much less accepted the true message from the pages of his Noli and Fili. And so, as long as we refuse to learn from the bitter lessons of history, we are condemned to keep on repeating the bitter parts of it. Perhaps we deserve the curse of the Philippine social cancer.