Graciano Lopez Jaena, Iloilo Radical
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Graciano Lopez Jaena
Jaena’s parents were Placido Lopez and Maria Jacobo Jaena. He grew up wanting to be a physician, and with some difficulty in enrolling for medical studies, became an assistant at San Juan de Dios Hospital in Intramuros. He did not last long since he was beginning to find journalism more interesting.
At the young age of 18, he wrote “Fray Botod,” unpublished. But his manuscript, reprinted, was quite widely read in the archipelago. It was a searing description of a friar who was quite fat (botod), totally lascivious, sexually obsessed, and abusive. He kept a group of girls he called kanding-kanding who would do whatever he pleases, and mostly in bed. During his afternoon siestas, the friar would have one girl looking for lice, another stroking his huge tummy, yet another whispering gossip in his ear. Despite all this, they would be whipped or assaulted if they ran afoul of his temper. Later two older women, his official mistresses, would cater to his needs.
Fray Botod ran roughshod over the town he governed. He invoked God’s name to defend his temper, unreasonable behavior, and readiness to whip someone. Jose Rizal opined that much as Fray Botod and other friars with similar characters were to blame, so too were the people and their ignorance, which engendered superstition and an irrational deference to friars.
Graciano Lopez Jaena saw another dimension in this warped relationship between friars and citizens. Driven by poverty, townspeople followed the dictates of the powerful and wealthy. They would obey even the most miserable and demeaning demands in order to survive, or gain some power under the friar's mantle.
Although “Fray Botod” was unsigned, Graciano Lopez Jaena felt he would sooner or later be identified as the author. He went to Spain to become an exile. He would later return very briefly under another name (the friars were after him). He lived in Barcelona, a city and people that were distinct from the Castilian majority in the rest of Spain. The tension allowed Filipinos more leeway in airing their agendas and decrying Castilian oppression in the Philippines.
Taking an interest in journalism, Lopez Jaena in 1888 founded and became the editor of La Solidaridad, a 12-page periodical in magazine-size format. It called for representation in the Spanish Cortes or Congress, the end to the exiling of Filipinos, and exposed friar abuse in the homeland.
La Solidaridad
The notion of representation in the Cortes was as far as Lopez Jaena and the later editors would go given their middle-class affiliations. They hesitated to advocate for independence, which Mexico and other South American countries fought and won decades prior. Opposition to exiling Filipino reformists out of the country was understandable given the hardships exiles encountered.
But it was Lopez Jaena’s implacable opposition to friar abuse that persisted in the pages of La Solidaridad throughout its seven-year existence. These brickbats also featured in his oratory, for which he was noted, and in articles he wrote for other publications.
Lopez Jaena was a Mason like other Filipino intellectuals. In Europe and in the United States at the time, Masonry was a standard affiliation of intellectuals and statesmen like President George Washington. Masonic lodges differed in temperament. Some were committed to civic works, others, as in the case of the Filipino lodges, were secretive radical reform groups. The Catholic Church was not pleased with their secrecy, codes of conduct, and secret meetings. Masons believed in a naturalistic god, for which they could be excommunicated by the Church. Jose Rizal and Marcelo H. Del Pilar (who succeeded Lopez Jaena as editor of La Solidaridad) were some of Filipino heroes that became Masons.
(L-R) Jose Rizal, Marcelo H. Del Pilar and Mariano Ponce
In his letters, rhetorical speeches, and articles, Lopez Jaena’s venom against the friars were persistent and unabated. It is said that he was to the left of Rizal in political beliefs and anti-friar stance.
Below is an excerpt from his much-praised speech about the opening of the Philippine Exposition in Barcelona in 1887. Like many of his speeches and articles, they start off with an effusive love for Spain and how much his countrymen had gained from the relationship. Then the problems are laid to the public, the continued poverty and the lack of representation and services for the poor. Then the friars are addressed as the culprits. Here’s a sample of Lopez Jaena’s oratorical skill:
“Imagine Spain, gentleman, that Spain of past ages, with her inquisitions and hypocrisies. Witchcraft and superstitious beliefs, wands and caldrons, gallows and knives, a Spain enclosed in castles and feudal lore and despotic monarchs. Take all these superstitions and transfer their setting to the Philippine Islands except that in the place of the lord with a snowy beard and sword and shield, place the figure of a gowned and tonsured friar. In place of gallows and knives, place whips and stocks and you will have the somber picture of the Philippines.”
With such rhetorical flourish, Lopez Jaena won immense applause from his Barcelona audience who, though thousands of miles away, could picture a backward Philippine society kept in that state by the friars. The Mexican and other South American revolutions banished their friars, with some returning to Spain but many others winding up in the Philippines, mostly the variety that gave the “men of god” a very bad name.
The first La Solidaridad issues were greeted with enthusiasm by fellow Filipinos including Jose Rizal, who was actually offered the editorship. He declined because he was then at the British Museum still finishing his annotations of Antonio Morga’s work on Philippine History. In his congratulatory letter, Rizal wrote, “I greatly hail the publication and newspaper La Solidaridad; count me in for everything, I want to be where you find yourselves and above all, because you profess thoughts that seem to be the most just."
Rizal wrote often for the publication as well as gave counsel on making sure there were no “blunders” and to always spread truth and facts. He encouraged increasing editorial pages from 12 to 16 pages and accepting advertisements especially from lawyers who could assist in legal problems faced by friends and families in the Philippines.
In less than a year, Lopez Jaena, drawn more into political speechmaking and writing, handed over the editorship to Marcelo H. Del Pilar. In a letter to Rizal before leaving the publication, he inferred that his name had been so marked that his life was in danger.
“The year 1896 ended all reformist hopes. The triumvirate and their dreams and hopes died that year.”
Years back, I visited the Ateneo Barcelones, which Lopez Jaena frequented to study and give speeches. “Ateneo” means a cultural center, an association, a library, an archive. Located near the Ramblas, the famed boulevard in the city’s center, the Ateneo was the quintessential gentlemen’s library with long study desks with their own lamps, book-lined walls, cushioned chairs, and windows with a marvelous view of the garden. The scholarly setting surely must have inspired Lopez Jaena to research lengthily and improve on his oratorical skills. The Barcelones, a somewhat stuffy library, must have contrasted with his appearance. Jose Alejandrino, a fellow Filipino who was studying in Belgium, encountered the orator and described him as “the personification of slovenliness.”
Lopez Jaena got away with his slovenliness by prefacing his talks with “his obscure and unknown name, a stranger among you with a physiognomy denoting the character of far-away lands, belonging to a race distinct from yours, speaking a language different from yours, as my accent reveals.” Alejandrino added that the orator "looked frail, a stutterer, with a very pronounced Bisayan accent.” His appearance and demeanor didn’t seem to matter to his applauding Catalan audiences.
Despite his grumblings that Spanish publications gave little space to his opinion pieces, he managed to contribute to many Spanish and European newspapers including, Los Dos Mundos, El Liberal, El Progreso, Bandera Social of Madrid, La Publicidad, El Pueblo Soberano, El Diluvio, Espana en Filipinas, Revisit del Circulo Hispano, and Revista Economica de la Camara de Comercio de Espana in London.
His speeches and articles bore the rhetorical tone of the times. But I note a sense of insecurity despite his bold renderings, possibly from feeling inadequate and under a microscope while living in Europe. One of his first acquaintances was Ferdinand Blumentritt, who in a letter in 1888 to a professor Hugo Schuchardt, wrote that "Jaena often leaves a long wait for an answer. He is also very vain and easy to hurt. Like most Indios, they always believe that one wants to mock or humiliate them... They are extraordinarily good, amiable, and noble. I now understand why the Europeans talk so badly about them. The Indios are shutting up before them because they always believe the whites want to make fun of them.”
There was much congratulations and fanfare for La Solidaridad's maiden issue, with Jose Rizal leading the flock. But the unexplained departure of Lopez Jaena from editorship just close to a year later signaled the paper’s unraveling. Rizal, Marcelo del Pilar, and Lopez Jaena were seen as a triumvirate in the Propaganda Movement. But soon, an acrimonious exchange of letters between del Pilar and Rizal indicated a rift that would not be resolved for years.
By 1892, the letters of Lopez Jaena were desperate. He had just come back from the Philippines under an assumed name and eluded the Friars who were looking for him. He never got to see his family in Iloilo, except his brother who was in Manila. He left the Philippines with a 40-pesos monthly allowance promised by a support committee, which would not be enough.
His letters especially to Rizal were pitiful, asking the latter for financial help. Rizal himself was not the best person to ask since he too lived on small allowances and had borrowed money to pay for the printing of his latest book, El Filibusterismo.
Lopez Jaena developed tuberculosis and his health worsened. He continued asking Rizal for money. He received a postcard from Rizal from Borneo, saying he was planning to set up a Filipino community there, a signal that some reformists had given up on the Philippines. Lopez Jaena immediately wrote back asking Rizal to buy him a piece of land suitable for growing sugar cane. He himself had given up too.
In another letter, Lopez Jaena told Rizal he would consider living in Hong Kong, away from the friars. Another letter told of his failed attempts at seeking representation in the Cortes, calling it an impossible task. The friars had made sure the Cortes would not to give in to Filipino demands. Lopez Jaena finally told Rizal that revolution was the only answer for the country.
The year 1896 ended all reformist hopes. Lopez Jaena died penniless in a public hospital in Barcelona in January that year. His body to this day cannot be located since it was buried in a pauper's grave. Marcelo del Pilar would also die six months later, penniless as well, and Rizal would be executed in December. The triumvirate and their dreams and hopes died that year.
The Graciano Lopez Jaena statue in Iloilo (Photo by Paul Cordero, Panay News)
There are lessons to ponder about how Graciano Lopez Jaena could have done it differently. The Katipunan revolt, the Philippine American War, the Sakdal revolt, the guerrilla warfare during the Japanese occupation, and the more recent People Power Revolution may provide insights on how social change could come about.
Wherever those insights may be, take pride at least in your hometown hero, Graciano Lopez Jaena. He might not have seen victory in his lifetime, but surely, his writings, oratory, and letters helped in securing freedoms we still enjoy today.
The author delivered this speech at Museo Iloilo.
John L. Silva is executive director of the Ortigas Library, a research library in Manila.
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