Mary Donna Grace Cuenca

MA in History

Graciano Lopez-Jaena

Understanding the very concept of nationalism is fraught with disagreements.

Nevertheless, it is the task of any social scientist to carefully tread along the shifting meanings

and constantly evolving nature of the term. This dynamic quality of nationalism is unavoidable

because it operates against a social backdrop that is conscious of contexts and changes through

time. The world is never static, nor does it function in a state of time-proof suspension.

Nationalism glides along that change, fetching meanings and contexts in the process. Its

theoretical formulations, created as a result of its ongoing debates are not merely moot and

academic. Rather, these debates inevitably produce parallel social and political applications that

range from moderate to radical. In fact, nationalist philosophizing is a necessary political tool

recognized to contribute in mobilizing a generally indifferent citizenry, as has been proven by

Rizal and Bonifacio.

The theoretical and practical aspects of nationalism are inseparable; they form part of the

same creative, dynamic framework for advancing the cause of the nation. This paper is an

attempt to present a specific dimension of nationalism shown in the context of colonialism and

its appertaining structural and social apparatuses. In particular, this paper will describe how a

well-known historical personality like Graciano Lopez-Jaena understood, or problematized,

albeit and perhaps unconsciously, the idea of nationalism. Hence, this paper will attempt to

investigate the life of Graciano Lopez-Jaena, the historical context of the social movement that

he participated in, and the historiography of his works in relation to nationalism.

Biography

The Propaganda Movement of the 19 th century produced a number of notable “Filipino”

figures whose contributions to the framing and conceptualization of Filipino nationalism were

creatively expressed through the struggle for reforms in the Philippines. Among them was

Graciano Lopez-Jaena, born in Iloilo on December 18, 1856 to Placido Lopez, a general

repairman, and Maria Jacoba Jaena, a seamstress. At the age of six, Graciano was placed under

the care of Father Francisco Jayme who noted his intellectual and oratorical abilities.

Because his mother was deeply religious and felt that the priesthood was the most noble

of occupations, young Graciano was sent to the Seminario de San Vicente Ferrer in Jaro during

the brief liberal administration of Governor General Carlos de la Torre. It was here that his

talents were noticed yet again. While at the seminary, Graciano served as secretary to his uncle,

Claudio Lopez, who was honorary vice consul of Portugal in Iloilo. However, it was Graciano’s

ultimate desire to be a physician so he convinced his mother that it was the better course of

action. He sought enrollment at the University of Santo Tomas but was denied admission because

he lacked the required Bachelor of Arts degree. Nonetheless, because his apparent intellectual

ability, he was directed to the San Juan de Dios Hospital as an apprentice.

Unfortunately, financial support from their relatives ran out and his poor parents could

not afford to keep him in Manila. Thinking that his knowledge on medicine was enough, he

returned to Iloilo to practice the art of healing in outlying communities. It was during this

process of helping the poor and the common people that he witnessed rampant social injustice—

stirring within him deep feelings of empathy towards the oppressed. Hence, it was also during

this time, when he travelled to the towns and villages of Iloilo that his socio-political views were
first shaped. At eighteen, he wrote the story of “Fray Botod” “which depicted the stereotypical

friar who uses religion as a tool for oppressing others in order to satiate his appetite for food,

money and women” (Scribd, 2010).

Although this work was not published, a copy circulated within the region, thereby

earning him the ire of the friars. Fortunately, the friars could not prove that Lopez-Jaena was the

author, so he was safe, at least for the time being. What got him into trouble was when he refused

to testify in court that a prisoner died of a natural cause when it was obvious that he died at the

hands of the mayor of Pototan. Graciano learned of this incident because he was asked to attend

to the dying prisoner. Before he even got there, the person was already dead. The seriousness of

the situation was apparent, and the mayor was so concerned about saving himself.

Graciano would not want to have any involvement however, so he was threatened by the

authorities. Such threats to his life compelled him to leave for Spain. This personal experience of

persecution not only intensified his negative opinion about the colonial government—but also

reinforced his socio-political views. More importantly, such experience of persecution activated

his latent desire to work for reforms in the country; and it was indeed only a matter of time when

he joined a group of young Filipino intellectuals in Spain who were then thinking of forming an

organization that would push for specific reform objectives back in the Philippines.

In Spain, Graciano Lopez-Jaena became a leading figure in what came to be known as the

Propaganda Movement. He, along with Marcelo H. del Pilar and Jose Rizal became known as the

triumvirate of Filipino propagandists. Of the three, he was the first to arrive and may therefore be

appropriately called the Genesis of the Propaganda Movement. The different political

atmosphere that he experienced in that country—a stark contrast with what he observed in the

colonial government of the Philippines, served to further encourage his nationalistic tendencies.
19th century Spain was a liberal constitutional monarchy with a functional administrative

apparatus for universal suffrage. Additionally, freemasonry, which propagated the ideals of

liberty, equality and fraternity was a powerful political force tolerated in Spain.

Such extreme political polarization between Spain and the Philippines led Lopez-Jaena to

question the existing condition of his country. Why shouldn’t Filipinos enjoy the same social

conditions enjoyed by the people of Spain? What factors account for this difference of treatment

between the natives and the Spaniards? It was Lopez-Jaena’s opinion that there was in fact no

justifiable cause for such differential treatment. Thus, he believed that reforms should be

administered in the Philippines to enable its people to live better. His specific program for

reforms included, among others, equality before the law, universal suffrage, republicanism,

human rights and freedoms, education that is independent from religion, and the stimulation of

labor and development of industry. 1

Like all propagandists, Lopez-Jaena advocated these reforms through journalism and

literary writing. A talented writer and prolific journalist, he is remembered for founding the

movement’s fortnightly newspaper, the La Solidaridad. Here, he wrote passionately about the

plight of the Filipinos at home. He described his people’s suffering in the hands of a corrupt

colonial regime; and was aggressive in criticizing the friars who for him represented Spanish

decadence. However, his main contribution to the struggle for reforms in the Propaganda

Movement is to be found in the creative power of his words produced spontaneously through

excellent oratory. His eloquence with respect to oratory could never be equaled even by Rizal.

In fact, Mariano Ponce, another Filipino propagandist in Spain observed in one occasion,

“…a deafening ovation followed the close of the peroration, the ladies waved their kerchiefs

wildly, and the men applauded frantically as they stood up from their seats to embrace the

1 The first issue of the La Solidaridad came out on February 15, 1889 and its editorial expressed its aims.
speaker.” This unparalleled command of speech cannot be overemphasized for Lopez Jaena.

Suffice it to say, he was the best amongst the best, the finest spokesman for Filipinos during his

generation; the most articulate speaker of the 19th century—one who used his penchant for words

in the service of his country. Unfortunately for the Propaganda Movement, and for the rest of the

Filipinos, Graciano Lopez-Jaena died of tuberculosis on January 20, 1896. The orator of the

Propaganda Movement, the first in the triumvirate, lost his life in poverty, just two and a half

years before the declaration of independence from Spain by Emilio Aguinaldo.

Historical and Social Context

The development of Graciano Lopez-Jaena’s intellectual orientation was largely built

around the social and political upheavals of the 19 th century. As an expatriate Filipino intellectual

forced to live abroad, his understanding of society was fundamentally shaped by events that took

place both within and outside the colonial Philippines. The conditions of oppression that he

witnessed in his hometown opened his eyes to the harsh realities of colonial rule. Himself a

victim of such oppression, he understood deeply the suffering of his fellow Filipinos who were

left to endure the viciousness of political domination. But while he was in Spain, he was

astonished to see that the socio-political conditions were different. He was then already

conscious of liberalism and democracy as political ideologies; but it was in Spain where he was

formally introduced to such concepts. It was also in Spain that he actually experienced the

freedoms offered by such political philosophies.

Realizing, through his exposure to liberalism, that it was possible for Filipinos to live on

equal terms with the Spaniards in the Philippines, he joined, in fact led—together with Jose Rizal

and Marcelo H. del Pilar, the Propaganda Movement in order to push for reforms, at least
initially. Hence, it was the liberal political atmosphere in Spain which facilitated the maturity of

his political ideals; but it did more than that. It also enabled him to freely advocate, without fear

of persecution, such ideals. In a manner of speaking, Spain became a friendly arena for Lopez-

Jaena and the rest of the other Filipino reformists who worked passionately for real, long-term

reforms in the Philippines.

Being initially a reformist, Lopez-Jaena advocated for peaceful assimilation of the

Philippines to Spain. This became the centerpiece of the Propaganda Movement’s reform agenda.

In essence, assimilation meant that the Philippines would become a province of Spain, thereby

granting Filipinos the same rights and privileges afforded to the Spaniards. Lopez-Jaena

summoned all the resources that he could muster—intellectual or otherwise, to see to it that

assimilation would not only be a possibility, but a reality for the Philippines. Already a follower

of liberalism and freemasonry, he championed the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity.

Unfortunately however, it was his affiliation with freemasonry that got him into trouble—

he had to defend himself against the stereotypical accusation of being Protestant. In the 19 th

century Spanish colonial setting, Protestantism would mean that you are anti-Catholic and by

extension, anti-Spanish. This view was propagated by the friars, who took inspiration from the

White Legend belief that Spain had declined because men of the Enlightenment, as the heirs of

Luther and the disciples of Voltaire and Rousseau, had poisoned Spain’s Catholic essence which

constituted its sign of identity and the foundation of its greatness.2

The countervailing Black Legend propaganda supported by Protestants and Liberals was

this: Spain became a bastion of intolerance, ignorance and bigotry. To explain the

‘backwardness’ of Spain, and the gap which had opened between its wretched poverty and the

prospering nations of northern Europe, there was no need to look beyond the Inquisition which

2 Carr, Raymond. (2001). Spain: A History. p.8

had cut Spain off from the intellectual and scientific achievements which were the basis of the

advanced nations’ prosperity and progress.3 Thus, liberals believed that Spain’s regeneration

depended on a philosophical system that values self-improvement. Such view was reminiscent of

the idea of the Protestant ethic. In fact, Krausism, a version of the Protestant ethic was developed

in the 18th century as part of an effort to speed up intellectual regeneration in Spain. Krausism

laid great emphasis on education and on moral purpose rather than utility. The legacy of

Krausism was the ideal of an open, tolerant society. For this reason, it was regarded by Catholics

as a pagan heresy, a direct attack by the legatees of freemasonry and Protestantism on the

educational and social influence of the church.4

Because Lopez-Jaena was a freemason, he was automatically regarded a Protestant and

therefore a pagan. But Lopez-Jaena’s association with freemasonry and liberalism was predicated

only on the belief that its principles form the core values of a democratic political system which

was supposed to be upheld by a “benevolent” colonial regime. For him, it was the only way by

which Spain could preserve its colony in the Pacific.

Lopez-Jaena was aware of the fact that the Spanish regime was already a dwindling

political power in the 19th century, as it was already losing much of its colonies in Europe and

Latin America. The reasons for such tragic loss of colonies were multifarious, and were both

endogenous and exogenous. As a vast empire, it lacked the money, troops or will to keep

possession of what it claimed. Also, endless wars and civil turmoil drained the country of money

and manpower (Hill, 2008). Corruption within Spain as well as in its overseas colonies only

exacerbated the situation. A major catalyst however, was the spread of liberalism as a political

ideology not only in Spain, but in the rest of the European world. This perpetrated through trade

3 Carr, Raymond. (2001). Spain: A History. p. 7

4 Ibid.
and education to Spain’s colonial possessions, thereby initializing an era of increased political

aggression. In fact, the Propaganda Movement was in many ways a product of the spread of

liberalism.

Ironically, Lopez-Jaena believed that the Propaganda Movement was the major political

force which should carry Spain forward, at least in the Pacific. The Propaganda Movement was

not anti-Spain; it was in essence a crusade to help Spain maintain its colony in the Philippines.

Thus, in the La Solidaridad, Lopez-Jaena articulated the logic behind the call for reforms in the

country, often citing that it would be to the advantage of Mother Spain. He argued that unless

Spain would heed this call for reforms, the conditions of exploitation would eventually become

so unbearable that Filipinos would finally rise in rebellion to exercise their rights.

It was thus politically expedient for Spain to start treating the Filipinos as equals, if the

empire wishes to maintain its dominion over them. He believed that reforms were necessary for

the political survival of the empire. Lopez-Jaena’s articulations of the need for reform were

substantiated through spiteful criticisms of the abuses of the colonial government. This he did

through the La Solidaridad, but mostly through spontaneous, extemporaneous speeches he

delivered in the streets of Madrid and Barcelona, and in banquets and university events in which

he was invited as guest speaker.

His most favorite target of ridicule, much to their chagrin, were the friars whose powers

perpetrated the political and economic aspects of Philippine colonial life, essentially by having

complete control of the private, individual lives of the Filipinos. As priests, they functioned as

spiritual advisers to the already Christianized natives whose sole source of information on the

Christian doctrine were the friars. In no time, the friars realized their capability for almost

limitless control that many of them were soon tempted to abuse its possibilities. The scope of
their power extended over the entire archipelago over the course of the centuries of Spanish

colonialism. Lopez-Jaena personally witnessed and experienced their wanton disregard for the

rule of law, especially in his hometown in Iloilo. Thus, his loathing for the friars was

understandable, expressions of which took center-stage in almost all of his spontaneous

oratorical presentations.

Towards the end of his life however, Graciano Lopez-Jaena became increasingly

disillusioned with the Propaganda Movement. Its failure to successfully and effectively push for

reforms in the Philippines led him to believe that it was a futile attempt to convince the Spanish

colonial government of the necessity for change. Hence, the former reformist radically

transformed into a revolutionary. His complete radicalization came at a time when others in the

Propaganda Movement were still hesitant to advocate an insurrection. Unlike Rizal, who was

ambiguous in his views about it, Lopez-Jaena clearly articulated the need for a revolution that

will free the Philippines from the clutches of Spanish domination. It was only through

revolutionary means, he believed, that the country could hope to attain its long overdue positive

transformation. From assimilation, Lopez-Jaena in the end campaigned for independence.

Expressions of Nationalism

Because Graciano Lopez-Jaena was initially a reformist, his original notion of a nation

was inextricably linked to the idea of Spain as the motherland and the Philippines as its province.

This was expressed through his use of the terms “Spanish Provinces” and “Philippine

Archipelago” instead of nation. In fact, in the Purposes of the La Solidaridad (1889), he stated:

“That province with eight million inhabitants cannot be, should not be the
exclusive patrimony of theocracy and traditionalism.”

Moreover, in one of the pages of the same paper, Lopez-Jaena asserted (1889):
 “Ignoring our archipelago is not the way to preserve it for Spain.”

With such conceptualization in mind, and as an expression of nationalism, he became one

of the leaders of the Propaganda Movement, the main agenda of which was assimilation. This

goal of the Propaganda Movement was reflected in the aims of the La Solidaridad, which Lopez-

Jaena enumerated in a speech at the Restaurant Ingles in 1883. He believed that through

assimilation, the Filipinos would be on co-equal terms with the Spaniards, and thus enjoy every

bit of rights afforded to their colonial masters.

The term “colonial masters” actually seemed to be a misnomer, since in a truly just

society, no one holds the right to be over and above the other, at least in terms of human worth

and dignity, and consequently—in terms of human rights. What Lopez-Jaena advocated was

equality through assimilation, not separation from Spain. Hence it is clear on the onset that

Lopez-Jaena was not anti-Spain. In fact, in true reformist fashion, and holding true to the belief

that the Philippines should be a province of Spain, Lopez-Jaena identified himself as a Spaniard

living in the Philippines. In 1889, at the Universal Exposition of Barcelona, he said:

“I, as a patriot, a Spaniard first of all, because I love Spain, I ought to rouse here,
so that it may be revealed, the mysterious veil of letters and obstruction that
explain why the Philippines does not advance and progress.”

The same thought was expressed in the 391st Anniversary of the Discovery of America by

Columbus, when he said in his speech the following:

“The nine million indios, to whose race I am proud to belong, who inhabit the
Philippine Archipelago, feel proud to be Spaniards and to call our dear mother
Spain, but they feel disheartened because they are deprived of their legitimate
rights.”

What he really hated was not Spain, but the abusive colonial officials exploiting the

natives. In particular, he abhorred the abuses and greediness of the friars in the country. This he
expressed in his Fray Botod (1874), a biting satire exposing the decadence that befouled the

supposedly sacrosanct position held by the priesthood in the Philippines. It was this piece that

ultimately sent him to Spain as an exile. It is important to stress however, that while Lopez-Jaena

was anti-friar, he was not anti-Catholic. This young Filipino patriot came from a devout Catholic

family and was also a product of a Catholic school and seminary. His strong Catholic

background enabled him to critically discern the difference between true and false religion. He

saw the friars paying lip-service to Christian values that they never practiced, especially in terms

of their relationships with the natives. In his speech at the Universal Exposition of Barcelona

(1889), he said:

“The conflict between friars and the Filipinos is unwavering. It is not a conflict of
religion against religion; it is not a struggle of the native country against the
mother country; it is a struggle for life, for survival; one side defending
exploitation, the other fighting for their right to lead a modern life, to lead a free
life, to lead a democratic life.”

As much as Lopez-Jaena’s anti-friar sentiments were a result of his own experiences, they

were also a result of his exposure to the ideas of Spanish liberal intellectuals and his readings of

the works of post-renaissance writers like Voltaire, Hugo, Dumas, Lammenais, Sue, Volney,

Talleyrand, Renand and Diderot. His readings did much to make him believe that the friars in the

Philippines were the greatest cause of the sufferings of the Filipino people. He denounced

vigorously the role of the friars in introducing and maintaining obscurantism in the Philippines

and in obstructing progress of the people (The Kahimyang Project, 2011). A snippet in the

compilation of his Speeches, Articles and Letters (1974) is provided below:

“The friar is the omnipotent factor of the nothingness, of the backwardness, of

the misfortunes of these oceanic islands…the friars do not recognize any mother
country but their prior, any law but their constitution, their motto is to be
irreconcilable; they reject progress in any country they prey upon.”
 A deeper analysis of Lopez-Jaena’s expressions of nationalism would reveal that Lopez-

Jaena had a unique conception of his identity. From the snippets cited earlier, it is clear that he

regarded himself as Spanish by nationality, but Filipino by race. The inclusion of the notion of

race in his conceptualization of the nation is recognizable from his works. Such construct, such

racialization of the term nation is an important point to stress, because it is reflective of his

“elitist” ilustrado background. As an ilustrado fighting for assimilation, Lopez-Jaena was

essentially seeking Spanish rights.

This is problematic in the sense that in itself, assimilation would have demarcating

implications. It would necessarily raise the question of which peoples should be assimilated and

which would therefore be identified as “Filipinos”. Because it set a demarcation, it also displayed

an exclusionary nature that asked this imperative question: “What and who would constitute the

nation”? According to Paul Kramer (2006) in his book Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the

United States and the Philippines, by seeking for Spanish rights:

“The ilustrados would chart and unravel the dense fabric of Spanish imperial
racial formations that justified the status quo. This meant interposing themselves
as authorities between the islands’ peoples and the Spanish imperialists who
deprecated them. Writers in what came to be known as the Propaganda movement
would seek Spanish and broader European recognition of Philippine
sociocultural development in ways that both undermined and confirmed Spanish
colonial hierarchies. The Propaganda writers both satirized Spanish imperial
racism and held Philippine peoples up favorably to some of its standards. Their
starting point was that Spanish colonial illiberalism was the result—deliberate or
not—of misrecognition. Where Spaniards saw lazy, primitive savages in need of
military repression, Catholic evangelization and coercive labor control, they
should instead recognize the Philippines’ peoples as “overseas Spaniards”, their
“civilization” illustrated by their education, artistic achievement, eloquence in
Spanish, and loyalty to Spain. What Spanish imperialists called the ‘‘abyss’’
between the islands’ peoples and Spaniards was bridged by the legend of a
‘‘blood compact,’’ which bound the two through shared blood. This glancing,
rather than frontal, attack on Spanish imperial racism, by predicating political
 rights on sociocultural features, would also exclude certain Philippine peoples
from an ‘‘assimilated’’ Philippines. The ilustrado quest for Spanish recognition, in
other words, delimited the boundaries of who would ultimately be recognized as
‘Filipino’.”
The effort to construct an “imagined community” of Filipinos with a Spanish nationality

was an identity still premised on the condition of colonialism. Whether Lopez-Jaena and the

other members of the Propaganda Movement was conscious of that fact or not is now beyond the

point. What it meant essentially was the exclusion of groups who were not reached by Spanish

colonialism either because of geographic difficulties or fierce native resistance. These groups

included the Muslims of Mindanao and the natives of the Cordilleras. What the Propaganda

Movement represented was the assimilation of the colonized peoples of the pueblo, peoples who

were also internally racially stratified—with stratification based on class status and territorial

nativity.

Kramer (2006) perhaps had a way of summing up the convoluted issue of race and

Spanish colonialism when he said:

“Spanish colonial society in the islands by the nineteenth century was highly
racially stratified, with colonial difference marked in terms of territorial nativity,
mestizaje (blood mixture), and religious ‘‘civilization.’’ On the one hand, racial
difference was associated with territorial nativity, with ‘‘peninsular’’ Spaniards—
those with bilineal Spanish ancestry and European nativity—at the pinnacle of
colonial society. Philippine ‘‘creoles,’’ or ‘‘Philippine Spaniards,’’ blessed with
bilineal Spanish ancestry but corrupted by their colonial births, were beneath
them and often resentful of their lesser status. The ranks of the friar orders were
drawn exclusively from both ‘‘Spanish’’ communities, which also monopolized—
with few exceptions—all governmental positions above the level of alcalde mayor
(mayor). A second mode of difference was measured in blood mixture. ‘‘Spanish
mestizos,’’ the children of Spanish men and indio women, were relatively few in
number, compared with other mestizo groups, and would become prosperous
through both landholdings and as economic middlemen between indios and
European commercial houses, although they would also be objects of racial scorn
and social exclusion. Chinese mestizos were far more numerous, with Chinese-
indio intermarriage encouraged by Spanish authorities as a means of Catholic
evangelization. By the late nineteenth century, they were prominent among the
islands’ economic elites, having taken advantage of their unique position between
rural small producers and urban merchants to profit enormously from the growth
 of export trade. A third line of distinction divided those who were inside and
outside Hispanic Catholic civilization. There were the Chinese, whose
commercial success and resistance to conversion made them suspect to both
Spanish authorities and indios. On the territorial frontiers of the Spanish colony,
there were the infieles, the still-unconquered high- land animists of Luzon, often
collectively referred to as ‘‘Igorots,’’ and the ‘‘Moros’’ of the south, Muslims
whom Spaniards had named by borrowing a term used to describe the Muslims
that Catholic Spain had fought in its reconquest of the peninsula. Those who were
‘‘inside’’ Hispanic Catholic evangelization and ‘‘unmixed’’ in blood, the masses of
lowland peoples, were called indios, a term adapted from the New World
context.”

(Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States and the Philippines, p.39,
2006)

As years passed and the Propaganda Movement did not gain much by way of getting

tangible actual reforms introduced in the Philippines, Lopez-Jaena’s stand gradually became

more separatist. He began to lose interest in making the Philippines a province of Spain. His

appeals began to be directed more to his fellow Filipinos than to the Spaniards and the Spanish

government. His expression of nationalism thus became revolutionary than reformist. No longer

a believer of assimilation, he pushed for independence. For instance, in an honorary dinner for

Juan Luna in 1890, he said:

“It is time, gentlemen, to vindicate the Philippines from the diatribes and sarcasm
of some writers who say that we are good for nothing, intellectual pilgrims unfit
for progress and incapable of science…the intellectual pigmies, in the course of
time, may become giants.”

By 1890, Lopez-Jaena had become convinced that a revolution was necessary in order for

the Spanish Republic to be restored. But while advocating a revolution in Spain, he was

indirectly suggesting a revolution in the Philippines. He said:

“Oppressed and tyrannized peoples like the Filipinos, among whom the friars and
the bureaucrats are the omnipotent gods, cannot help but be revolutionaries,
 because they only trust and place their hopes in a republican government in order
to win their rights and freedoms.”

(Speeches, Articles and Letters, 1974)

In an article entitled The Philippine Revolution written in 1889, he voiced consent to

resorting to revolution if peaceful means failed. He said:

“Without the French Revolution, humanity would still be under the most
loathsome obscurantism and still be dominated by the severe hands of old
tyrannies. Without it, we would not be enjoying the wonderful spectacle of the
new conquests in science, especially in Physics and Chemistry, conquests which
have given the lie to those unwarranted assertion of truth which formerly were
taken for revelations.”

In a letter to Rizal in which he broached his plan to run as a candidate for representative

in a district in Cataluna, he wrote (1889:

“As a deputy in Spain, I do not have any pretensions about being able to give to
the Philippines her rights and liberties. These she must conquer with her own
blood, in the same manner as her independence… I believe that the Philippines
can only be separate from Spain by means of a revolution.”

In another letter to Rizal dated at Barcelona on August 26, 1889, he said that he proposed

to Jose Ma. Basa to negotiate with the rich people of Manila to support a periodical which he

was planning to publish, giving it a name El Baguio, under the auspices of a revolutionary party,

because he believed that the Philippines cannot get anything from Spain except through

revolution. Writing to Juan Luna, he also said (1889):

“Liberty and Progress are ever born out of revolution; let us be the children of
revolution.”

In an address in Barcelona in 1890 at the banquet in honor of Juan Sol Y Ortega,

president of the Partido Republican-Progresista of which he was a member, he defended the

people’s rising in revolution in order to bring about the triumph of Republicanism. He argued

thus:

“…Revolutions are postulates; they are formulas found in political law; they are
necessary to the public weal; they are the supreme and preeminent law used
against the oppressors of the motherland.”

Yet Lopez-Jaena did not argue a revolution for its own sake. He explained:

“We are not revolutionaries for the mere pleasure of being so; we do not make a
revolution for the pleasure of making it, or for an eagerness to kill and destroy…”

“We rebel because it is necessary to do so. Through revolution we kill as weeds

are killed, we destroy as phylloxera are destroyed for being detrimental,
harmful.”

(Speeches, Articles, Letters,

1974)

In a biography (Mightier than the Sword) of Lopez-Jaena written by Demy Sonza in

1988, the author said:

“He devoted his life to the soul-consuming obsession of making his country a
better place to live in and seeing his people enjoy a life worthy of the children of
God.”

She said further that Lopez-Jaena referred to his country as the “constant love of my

heart, the eternal thought of my mind…my vehement desire is to improve her lot, to see the sun

of progress, liberty, and law shine over her horizons” (Mightier than the Sword, 1988).

Conclusion
 Graciano Lopez-Jaena’s sense of nationalism found expression in his literary writing and

impeccable oratory. His creative genius proved beneficial to the Propaganda Movement, as he

chose to render his talents in the service of his country. But it was also through the Propaganda

Movement that Lopez-Jaena’s intellectual development was honed. This symbiotic relationship

was manifested through the evolution of his nationalist orientation. From being a reformist, he

transformed, towards the end of his life to being a revolutionary. The change that accompanied

his full intellectual flowering was reflective of the social conditions of his time.

Fully conscious of the fact that Spain would not grant reforms, he advocated for

revolution—referring to it as the last resort of a people who were enslaved for centuries under

the oppressive structure of authoritative colonialism. This radical change of heart and mind was

facilitated by his experiences of frustration within the Reform Movement. Lopez-Jaena was the

first among his compatriots to articulate a separatist agenda. While Rizal and the others were at

best ambiguous, Lopez-Jaena was clear in his conviction that only a revolution would redeem the

Filipinos from their sufferings. It is this that we should remember about this brave man from

Iloilo. Though not as celebrated as Rizal or Bonifacio, Graciano Lopez-Jaena proved to be a true

nationalist.

Primary Source

Lopez Jaena, Graciano. (1974). Speeches, Articles and Letters. Manila: National Historical
Commission. 220-223; 1-16.

Secondary Sources

Sonza, Demy. (1988). Mightier Than the Sword: Biography of Graciano Lopez-Jaena. Graciano
Lopez Jaena Press Foundation, Inc. Iloilo City, Philippines.
Salvilla, Rex. (2006). The Other Side of Graciano Lopez Jaena. Retrieved July 19, 2014 from
http://www.thenewstoday.info/2006/12/18/the.other.side.of.graciano.lopez.jaena.html

Kramer, Paul. (2006). Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States and the
Philippines. University of North Carolina Press. USA.

Carr, Raymond. (2001). Spain: A History. Oxford University Press. UK.