LOS ILLUSTRADOS
The main character in The Pretenders, as noted above, is Antonio Samson, who had moved to a slum in Manila as a teenager from the town of Rosales in Pangasinan after a failed revolt--led by his own father--had left him and the rest of his family homeless. With the financial help of his older sister and later through financial aid from one university dean in Manila, Antonio proceeds to America and studies at Harvard University whereby he also undertakes research at the Smithsonian Archives in Washington, D.C., where he meets the woman he will marry. Antonio writes his thesis on the history of "the Illustrados"--the heroes of the Philippines independence movement.
Through the years abroad, however, the young Antonio Samuel had gained a cynical streak. In his thesis, he wrote fairly critically of the Filipino national heroes. Specifically, Antonio stated of these Illustrados (or illustrious one), such as Jose Rizal: "They were bright young men who knew what money meant. But though they were rich and were educated in the best schools in Europe, their horizons were limited and they knew they could never belong to the alien aristocracy which determined the future of the Filipinas. They cried for reforms, for wider opportunities, for equality."
Antonio then raised several important questions concerning national historical memory: "Did they [these leaders] plead for freedom, too? And dignity for all indios [all non-mixed blood Filipinos]--and not only for themselves who owed their fortunes and their status to the whims of the aristocracy? Could it be that they wanted not freedom or dignity but the key to the restricted enclaves of the rulers?"
This past week, I walked from my hotel in Ermita to Rizal Park, which is the place to hang out for having people-watching experiences in Manila by day--and by night it is a place to get mugged or pick up a prostitute. In the park, there are many statues to heroes of the revolts, revolutions and wars of Philippine's 500 years of history. (There was no such thing as the Philippines before the Spanish came to the region in the 16th Century.)
http://www.worldlingo.com/ma/enwiki/en/Ermita_%28novel%29
In the Jose Rizal Park, there are also palm trees, flowers, relaxing benches, shade, ponds, performers, students practicing dance, music, Chinese and Japanese gardens, and a regular changing-of-the-guards in front of one mammoth monument to Jose Rizal (and indirectly to all Illustrados) near Roxas Boulevard. Interestingly, one local Filipino guide told me that day, this particular design for that particular enormous Rizal monument had been chosen by the U.S. occupation government around 1910 because the US military leadership liked the fact that this second place design had an obelisk in it, which made it resemble a diminutive Washington Monument (in Washington, D.C.).
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