The Propaganda Movement and La Solidaridad

The Propaganda Movement was a cultural organization form in 1872 by Filipino

expatriates in Europe. Composed of Filipino elite called “ilustrados”, exiled and students
attending Europe’s universities gravitated to the movement.
La Solidaridad (The Solidarity) was an organization created in Spain on December 13, 1888.
Composed of Filipino liberals exiled in 1872 and students attending Europe's universities, the
organization aimed to increase Spanish awareness of the needs of its colony, the Philippines, and
to propagate a closer relationship between the Philippines and Spain.
Headed by José Rizal's cousin, Galicano Apacible, it also issued a newspaper of the same
name which was published in Barcelona, Spain. The first issue of La Solidaridad came out on
February 15, 1889. It was edited by Graciano López Jaena and later on by Marcelo H. del Pilar.
The social, cultural, and economic conditions of the colonial Philippines were published in La
Solidaridad. Speeches of the Spanish liberals about the Philippines were also featured in the
newspaper. La Solidaridad served as the principal organ of the Propaganda Movement to express
the goal of achieving assimilation with Spain.
Members
• Dr. José Rizal (Laong Laan and Dimasalang)
• Marcelo H. del Pilar (Plaridel)
• Graciano Lopez Jaena (Diego Laura)
• Antonio Luna (Taga-Ilog)
• Mariano Ponce (Tignalang, Kalipulako, Naning)
• Jose Maria Panganiban (Jomapa)
• Dominador Gomez (Ramiro Franco)

Other members
• Dr. Pedro Paterno
• Antonio Maria Regidor
• Isabelo delos Reyes
• Eduardo de Lete
• José Alejandrino
• Juan Luna
• Miguel Moran
• Felix Hidalgo
• Pedro Serrano
• Haris Rataban

International members

• Professor Ferdinand Blumentritt (Austrian ethnologist)

• Dr. Miguel Morayta Sagrario (Spanish historian, university professor and statesman)
Note: Some friends of the Propaganda Movement also contributed.

History
La Solidaridad was established to express the goal of the Propaganda Movement towards
achieving assimilation with Spain. The first issue of La Solidaridad came out on February 15,
1889. A fortnightly and a bi-weekly newspaper, La Solidaridad serves as the principal organ of
the Reform Movement in Spain.
Comite de Propaganda in the Philippines funded the publication of the La Solidaridad.
The editorship for the newspaper was first offered to Rizal. However, he refused because during
that time he was annotating Antonio de Morga's Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas in London. After
Rizal, Graciano López Jaena was offered for the editorship of La Solidaridad and he accepted.
On April 25, 1889, La Solidaridad published the letter entitled "The aspirations of the
Filipinos" which was written by the Asociación Hispano-Filipina de Madrid (English: Hispanic
Filipino Association of Madrid). It pursued desires for:
• Representation in the Cortes
• Abolition of censure
• An expressed and definite prohibition of the existing practices of exiling residents by
purely administrative order, and without a writ of execution from the courts of justice.

On December 15, 1889, Marcelo H. del Pilar replaced Graciano López Jaena as the editor
of La Solidaridad. Under his editorship, the aims of the newspaper expanded. His articles caught
the attention of Spanish leaders and ministers.[3] Using propaganda, it pursued desires for:
• That the Philippines be a province of Spain
• Representation Filipino priests instead of Spanish friars — Augustinians, Dominicans,
and Franciscans — in parishes and remote sitios
• Freedom of assembly and speech
• Equal rights before the law (for both Filipino and Spanish plaintiffs)

After years of publication from 1889 to 1895, funding of the La Solidaridad became
scarce. Comite de Propaganda's contribution to the newspaper stopped and del Pilar funded the
newspaper almost on his own. Penniless in Spain, del Pilar stopped the publication of La
Solidaridad on November 15, 1895, with 7 volumes and 160 issues. In del Pilar's farewell
editorial, he 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.
Notable contributors
 Several writers contributed to La Solidaridad over its six years of existence, like Antonio
Luna, Anastacio Carpio, Mariano Ponce, Antonio María Regidor, José María Panganiban,
Isabelo de los Reyes, Eduardo de Lete, José Alejandrino, and Pedro Paterno. One of the most
prolific contributors though was Rizal's confidant Ferdinand Blumentritt, whose impassioned
defense of the Filipino interests was said to have been inspirational to the other writers and the
readers of the newspaper alike.
1. "José Rizal and the Propaganda Movement". Retrieved 2011-11-04.
2. "La Solidaridad and La Liga Filipina". Philippine-History.org. Retrieved 2011-11-04.
3. Schumacher, John N. (1973). The Propaganda Movement, 1880-1895: the creation of a Filipino consciousness
(1997 ed.). Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press. p. 333. ISBN 978-971-550-209-2.
4. Hispanic Filipino Association of Madrid (April 25, 1889). "The aspirations of the Filipinos". Barcelona, Spain: La
Solidaridad. Archived from the original on July 13, 2010. Retrieved July 19, 2010.
5. http://www.knightsofrizal.be/la_solidaridad/default.html
References
•Constantino, Renato. A Past Revisited. Quezon City: Tala Publications, 1975.
•Zaide, Sonia M. and Gregorio F. Zaide. The Philippines: A Unique Nation. Manila: All-Nations Publishing, 1999.
•Zaide, Gregorio F. Philippine History and Government. National Bookstore Printing Press, 1984

Jose Rizal's Brindis Speech: A Toast Honoring Juan Luna

and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo
The following is the English translation of the full text
of Rizal's brindis or toast speech delivered at a
banquet in the Restaurant Inglés, Madrid, on the
evening of June 25, 1884 in honor of Juan Luna,
winner of the gold medal for his painting, “El
Spoliarium,” and Felix Resurrección Hidalgo, winner
of a silver medal, for his painting “Virgenes
Cristianas Expuestas al Populacho” at a Exposición
Nacional de Bellas Artes de Madrid.
 
   This was taken from  Gems of Philippine oratory; selections representing fourteen
centuries of Philippine thought, carefully compiled from credible sources in substitution for the
pre-Spanish writings destroyed by missionary zeal, to supplement the later literature stunted by
intolerant religious and political censorship, and as specimens of the untrammeled present-day
utterances, by Austin Craig, page 34-37, University of Manila, 1924.
 
In rising to speak I have no fear that you will listen to me with superciliousness, for you
have come here to add to ours your enthusiasm, the stimulus of youth, and you cannot but be
indulgent. Sympathetic currents pervade the air, bonds of fellowship radiate in all directions,
generous souls listen, and so I do not fear for my humble personality, nor do I doubt your
kindness. Sincere men yourselves, you seek only sincerity, and from that height, where noble
sentiments prevail, you give no heed to sordid trifles. You survey the whole field, you weigh the
cause and extend your hand to whomsoever like myself, desires to unite with you in a single
thought, in a sole aspiration: the glorification of genius, the grandeur of the fatherland!
 
Such is, indeed, the reason for this gathering. In the history of mankind there are names
which in themselves signify an achievement-which call up reverence and greatness; names
which, like magic formulas, invoke agreeable and pleasant ideas; names which come to form a
compact, a token of peace, a bond of love among the nations. To such belong the names of Luna
and Hidalgo: their splendor illuminates two extremes of the globe-the Orient and the Occident,
Spain and the Philippines. As I utter them, I seem to see two luminous arches that rise from
either region to blend there on high, impelled by the sympathy of a common origin, and from
that height to unite two peoples with eternal bonds; two peoples whom the seas and space vainly
separate; two peoples among whom do not germinate the seeds of disunion blindly sown by men
and their despotism. Luna and Hidalgo are the pride of Spain as of the Philippines-though born
in the Philippines, they might have been born in Spain, for genius has no country; genius bursts
forth everywhere; genius is like light and air, the patrimony of all: cosmopolitan as space, as life
and God.
 
The Philippines' patriarchal era is passing, the illustrious deeds of its sons are not
circumscribed by the home; the oriental chrysalis is quitting its cocoon; the dawn of a broader
day is heralded for those regions in brilliant tints and rosy dawn-hues; and that race, lethargic
during the night of history while the sun was illuminating other continents, begins to wake, urged
by the electric' shock produced by contact with the occidental peoples, and begs for light, life,
and the civilization that once might have been its heritage, thus conforming to the eternal laws of
constant evolution, of transformation, of recurring phenomena, of progress.
 
This you know well and you glory in it. To you is due the beauty of the gems that circle
the Philippines' crown; she supplied the stones, Europe the polish. We all contemplate proudly:
you your work; we the inspiration, the encouragement, the materials furnished.
They imbibed there the poetry of nature-nature grand and terrible in her cataclysms, in her
transformations, in her conflict of forces; nature sweet, peaceful and melancholy in her constant
manifestation-unchanging; nature that stamps her seal upon whatsoever she creates or produces.
Her sons carry it wherever they go. Analyze, if not her characteristics, then her works; and little
as you may know that people, you will see her in everything moulding its knowledge, as the soul
that everywhere presides, as the spring of the mechanism, as the substantial form, as the raw
material. It is impossible not to show what one feels; it is impossible to be one thing and to do
another.
 
Contradictions are apparent only; they are merely paradoxes. In El Spoliarium -on that
canvas which is not mute-is heard the tumult of the throng, the cry of slaves, the metallic rattle of
the armor on the corpses, the sobs of orphans, the hum of prayers, with as much force and
realism as is heard the crash of the thunder amid the roar of the cataracts, or the fearful and
frightful rumble of the earthquake. The same nature that conceives such phenomena has also a
share in those lines.
 
 On the other hand, in Hidalgo's work there are revealed feelings of the purest kind; ideal
expression of melancholy, beauty, and weakness-victims of brute force. And this is because
Hidalgo was born beneath the dazzling azure of that sky, to
the murmur of the breezes of her seas, in the placidity of her
lakes, the poetry of her valleys and the majestic harmony of
her hills and mountains. So, in Luna we find the shades, the
contrasts, the fading lights, the mysterious and the terrible,
like an echo of the dark storms of the tropics, its thunderbolts,
and the destructive eruptions of its volcanoes. So, in Hidalgo  
we find all is light, color, harmony, feeling, clearness; like the  
Philippines on moonlit nights, with her horizons that invite to
meditation and suggest infinity. Yet both of them-although so
different-in appearance, at least, are fundamentally one; just
as our hearts beat in unison in spite of striking differences.
Beth, by depicting from their palettes the dazzling rays of the
tropical sun, transform them into rays of unfading glory with
which they invest the fatherland. Both express the spirit of   Felix Resurreccion
our social, moral and political life; humanity subjected to   Hidalgo, 1901.
hard trials, humanity unredeemed; reason and aspiration in
open fight with prejudice, fanaticism and injustice; because feeling and opinion make their way
through the thickest walls, because for them all bodies are porous, all are transparent; and if the
pen fails them and the printed word does not come to their aid, then the palette and the brush not
only delight the view but are also eloquent advocates. If the mother teaches her child her
language in order to understand its joys, its needs, and its woes; so Spain, like that mother, also
teaches her language to Filipinos, in spite of the opposition of those purblind pygmies who, sure
of the present, are unable to extend their vision into the future, who do not weigh the
consequences.
 
Like sickly nurses, corrupted and corrupting, these opponents of progress pervert the
heart of the people. They sow among them the seeds of discord, to reap later the harvest, a
deadly nightshade of future generations.
 
But, away with these woes! Peace to the dead, because they are dead breath and soul are
lacking them; the worms are eating them! Let us not invoke their sad remembrance; let us not
drag their ghastliness into the midst of our rejoicing! Happily, brothers are more-generosity and
nobility are innate under the sky of Spain-of this you are all patent proof. You have unanimously
responded, you have cooperated, and you would have done more, had more been asked. Seated
at our festal board and honoring the illustrious sons of the Philippines, you also honor Spain,
because, as you are well aware, Spain's boundaries are not the Atlantic or the Bay of Biscay or
the Mediterranean-a shame would it be for water to place a barrier to her greatness, her thought.
(Spain is there-there where her beneficent influence i"s exerted; and even though her flag should
disappear, there would remain her memory-eternal, imperishable. What matters a strip of red and
yellow cloth; what matter the guns and cannon; there where a feeling of love, of affection, does
not flourish-there where there is no fusion of ideas, harmony of opinion?
 
 Luna and Hidalgo belong to you as much as to us. You
love them, you see in them noble hopes, valuable
examples. The Filipino youth of Europe always
enthusiastic-and some other persons whose hearts
remain ever young through the disinterestedness and
   enthusiasm that characterize their actions, tender Luna
a crown, a humble tribute-small indeed compared to
our enthusiasm-but the most spontaneous and freest of
all the tributes yet paid to him.
 
But the Philippines' gratitude toward her
illustrious sons was yet unsatisfied; and desiring to
Juan Luna    give free rein to the thoughts that seethe her mind, to
the feelings that overflow her heart, and to the words
that escape from her lips, we have all come together here at this banquet to mingle our vows, to
give shape to that mutual understanding between two races which love and care for each other,
united morally, socially and politically for the space of four centuries, so that they may form in
the future a single nation in spirit, in duties, in aims, in rights. I drink, then, to our artists Luna
and Hidalgo, genuine and pure glories of two peoples. I drink to the persons who have given
them aid on the painful road of art!
 
I drink that the Filipino youth-sacred hope of my fatherland may imitate such valuable
examples; and that the mother Spain, solicitous and heedful of the welfare of her provinces, may
quickly put into practice the reforms she has so long planned. The furrow is laid out and the land
is not sterile! And finally, I drink to the happiness of those parents who, deprived of their sons'
affection, from those distant regions follow them with moist gaze and throbbing hearts across the
seas and distance; sacrificing on the altar of the common good, the sweet consolations that are so
scarce in the decline of life — precious and solitary flowers that spring up on the borders of the
tomb.