Speech
of
His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos
President of the Philippines
At the International Conference on “The Philippine Revolution and Beyond,” convened by the National Centennial Commission and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts

[Delivered at the Manila Hotel, August 21, 1996]

Our Revolution:
the past is present

WE BEGIN with words of thanks for all of you who are making this happen—for the international scholars who have traveled great distances to take part in this dialogue; for the Filipino historians who have been engaged all these years in the reconstruction and interpretation of our history; and for the organizers who were not daunted by the task of gathering these many brilliant minds under one roof.

The calendar defines the significance—and the timeliness—of this conference. This year we mark the centennial of the Philippine Revolution. This week, August 16-22, we celebrate Peace and Freedom Week. Two days from now, on Friday, August 23—our people and our country will commemorate the Cry of Pugad Lawin, which signaled the start of the Philippine Revolution of 1896.

A year of commemorations

It is striking that our Revolution started—neither with a “shot heard round the world” nor with the spilling of blood— but with the singular act of Andres Bonifacio and his fellow Katipuneros tearing up their cedulas, or tax certificatesr—the symbol of Spanish sovereignty over the Filipinos.

On December 30 we will mark the centennial of the martyrdom of Dr. Jose Rizal, whose life and work more than anything else inspired our national revolution—which led to General Emilio Aguinaldo’s proclamation of independence from Spain on June 12,1898. From these revolutionary beginnings the first republic in Asia was born. Rizal wrote on the eve of his execution, in his Mi Ultimo Adios (My Last Farewell): “When my death is forgotten, my grave unmarked, let the plow turn the earth where I lie. May my dust make fertile the fields. Where the grass grows thickly, there I dwell.

“When the night comes and my grave in darkness lies, break not the peace, kneel before the mystery. If you hear the sound of music, be not afraid. It is I.

But Rizal’s death is not forgotten, and the spot where he fell, on the old Bagumbayan Park near this historic Manila Hotel, is for us Filipinos hallowed ground. To commemorate the centennial of Rizal’s martyrdom, I approved yesterday the commissioning and minting of a special P500-silver coin.

Young men born to be heroes

Of our heroes of the propaganda period and the Revolution, the most striking quality was how young they all were. Rizal at age 26 had finished his incendiary novel, Noli Me Tangere, followed quickly by its sequel El Filibusterismo— and was dead at 35.

Andres Bonifacio founded the secret society Katipunan when he was 29 years old. When the Revolution began, Bonifacio’s faithful deputy Emilio Jacinto was still four months short of 21. And Emilio Aguinaldo at age 27 was the victorious general of the Revolution; and at 29 president of Asia’s first republic.

Not coincidentally, we also commemorate—today—the thirteenth anniversary of the martyrdom of Ninoy Aquino, whose assassination on August 21, 1983, set off the “People Power Revolution” that freed our country from dictatorship in February 1986.

In the speech he had prepared for his homecoming—a speech he never got to deliver, because he was taken off the plane he flew in and shot dead on the tarmac—Ninoy wrote:

‘The Filipino asks for nothing more, but will surely ask for nothing less than all the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution . . . the most sacred legacies from the founding fathers.”

In the same manner that Jose Rizal’s martyrdom paved the way for Philippine independence in 1898, Ninoy inspired the awakening and unification of our people toward the restoration of democracy and the rule of law in our country. Now that Ninoy’s dream of a truly democratic society is well on the way to realization, we can redirect our collective efforts to working for the development of our nation and the upliftment of the lives of our people.

This conference is a vivid reminder that we—the grateful countrymen of Bonifacio, Rizal, Aguinaldo and Ninoy Aquino—have not forgotten their words and their example. The nation they founded and strengthened abides and endures—because we as a people have kept faith with them.

Asia’s first free republic

But there is yet another dimension to this conference on the Philippine Revolution. With all of you, I share the conviction that this landmark period in our history deserves—and has long deserved—international attention and inquiry. For it is not for nothing that the Philippine Revolution gave birth to the first free republic in Asia.

As we retrace the onset of independence struggles in the old colonial world, we find, again and again, echoes—reverberations—of what took place in the Philippines a hundred years ago.

For instance, in his historical novel Awakenings, the well-known Indonesian writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer memorializes what our forebears did at the turn of the century. In a lengthy passage, one of Pramoedya’s characters speaks of the situation in the Philippines at the time, and of how he fervently hopes that someday the peoples of the Netherlands Indies would follow the example of the Filipinos.

Pramoedya writes: “The more European science and learning Natives obtain, whatever their race or nation, the more it is certain they will follow in the footsteps of the Filipino Natives, trying to free themselves from European rule. The Filipino natives wanted to stand up themselves as a free nation, acknowledged by all the civilized nations of the world.”

The ‘hidden hostelry’ of the Revolution

Yet much of the significance of the Philippine Revolution lies in what historians call “hidden history”—because most historical writing in this century that is known to the world was written from the Western viewpoint—with its unavoidable prejudices, omissions and self-praise.

Even the honorific terms for national struggle have been denied us. Our Revolution has often been described as a mere “rebellion.” And the war we waged against the Americans almost immediately afterward in 1899—to preserve the freedom we had won from the Spaniards—has been termed an “insurrection.”

I assure you we have no desire to inflate the significance of our Revolution; we seek only to know all the facts and to learn its true measure. And these only you as scholars can supply.

What significance other peoples and other nations may find in this exercise of probing the Philippine Revolutionary past we can only dimly imagine. But for our country and our people, this is of transcendent meaning and importance.

The writer William Faulkner once said: “History is not ‘was,’ it’s ‘is.’” The past is always in the present—and it will be in the future. In a similar vein, our own Rizal wrote—”We are anxious to learn of the Philippine past, which we need to understand . . . so that we can plan intelligently for the future.” Nothing in the past tells us more about ourselves—of what we as a people are capable—than the great acts of courage and faith that made us a nation. And no event in our history lifted our people’s sights more to the future than our Revolution of 1896.

It has often been said that the Philippine Revolution ended in failure. Because we Filipinos succeeded in overthrowing Spanish rule only to fall into the hands of an American republic seeking its “manifest destiny.” It has also been said that since 1896, our history has been one long, unfinished story of completing our Revolution.

The Revolution’s relevance to our times

Without presuming to do the work of scholars and historians, I believe that in this lies the abiding relevance of our revolution of 1896 to our own times—and the living connection of our people to the taproot of nationhood.

At one end, we Filipinos have always known the continuity of our revolutionary struggle—our struggle for independence and national sovereignty; our struggle for democracy and human rights; and our struggle for peace and development. That struggle against foreign domination really started with chieftain Lapu-lapu’s cry at Mactan after defeating Magellan in April 1521: “I bow to no man, I owe allegiance only to my people.”

At the other end, we acutely feel the tension between the claims of tradition and the dynamics of modernization. At every stage in our history, and in every sphere of our lives, we have constantly struggled to make past and present coexist—to be harmonized in a united whole as we face the challenges of the 21st century.

As we make our way toward the future, we are more than ever conscious of the revolutionary dreams we must redeem, and the balance we must strike, between tradition and modernization.

In our strivings to modernize national society—and to win our place of dignity in the world community—we need more than ever to renew ourselves, in the roots and sources of our nationhood. We need to return afresh to the parent stem of our republic—and to derive inspiration from the life and work of our heroes.

Because the dangers to a nation are not only violence and force from within and without. Peril to the nation can also come from forgetting.

As one Filipino proverb puts it: Ang di marunong lumingon sa pinanggalingan, ay di makararating sa paroroonan. “He who would not look back where he came from will never get where he wants to go.”

This is why we Filipinos regard history as a seamless web—and why we who lead this nation today see ourselves as heirs to heroes—entrusted to carry on what those generations of Filipino leaders who came before us tried to do.

The struggle for peace and development in our time

Foremost among these goals is the struggle for Filipino community—which Rizal, Bonifacio and Aguinaldo—and Ninoy Aquino after them—waged, each in his time and in his own way.

This selfsame cause of national unity the Ramos Administration tries to serve and to promote.

I have just returned from a peace mission in the province of Lanao del Sur in our southern island of Mindanao, where a Muslim secessionist movement has been fighting the Philippine state for 25 years at the cost of more than 120,000 Filipino lives. Last Monday, I met the secessionist leader Nur Misuari of the Moro National Liberation Front—and we together committed to create a Zone of Peace and Development in our southern regions.

Chairman Misuari and I agreed to seize the chance our patient negotiators have created—to take bold steps together to reshape the future of Mindanao—to turn its people from conflict to reconciliation; from mutual distrust to the unity of brothers; from stagnation and poverty to economic growth, social cohesion and sustainable development.

In this way—through that peace—we carry on the work of our heroes—of creating a Filipino nation.

At the time of the Philippine Revolution, we were a colonized country of 6.2 million people. Today one hundred years later, we are a free, open and democratic republic of 69 million people.

Completing the Revolution

One hundred years ago the Filipino nation came to birth from the strivings of young patriots like Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio. Now through the collective efforts and resilience of the present generations of Filipinos, we will complete the Revolution—by realizing its controlling vision of a land of freedom and peace, of sharing, caring and daring.

Today we Filipinos can tell Jose Rizal with conviction—and, through him, our entire pantheon of heroes: “We, your grateful people, have not forgotten your sacrifice. We now use the plow to turn the earth of your legacy, so that enduring peace and sustained development may reign throughout this land we love.”