diced b Jos e S. Arc a, - non

For Rizal, the year 1872 was notonly a fateful year, it was a landmark inthe history of the Philippines, a radical moment when history took a newshape. And he wanted to tell all his fellow Filipinos about it. It was atraumatic experience which gagged their mind, and he wanted to initiate aliberating catharsis once and for all from all the fears, frustrations, andestrangements numbing them as result of the tragedy of Cavite:Without 1872 there would be no Plaridel, no Jaena, not even Sancianco, norwould there be courageous and generous colonies of Filipinos in Europe.Without 1872, Rizal would now be a Jesuit and instead of writing Noli metangere, he would have written the opposite. Seeing those injustices, myimagination even as a child woke up. I swore to dedicate myself to avenge oneday so many victims. I have been studying with this idea, and this can be read inall my works and writings. Gal will give me the occasion some day to carry outmy promise.42Wherever he directed his footsteps, the events of Cavite pursued Rizal likea fantasm. Manuel Jerez Burgos, Fr. Burgos' nephew, through whoseinfluence Rizal had been admitted as a student at the Ateneo and in whosehouse he lived the first years he was in Manila (the same where the ill-starredpriest lived?), adds, after noting that Rizal was intelligent, but reticentand introverted: "Usually he did not mix with his companions beyondthat of commenting on those events that have just disturbed all of the archipelago."43Considering the facts from this perspective which to me faithfullyreflects Rizal's mental state, the novels of the great Filipino hero are muchmore than mere literary narratives, charged with folkloric and romanticthemes easily understood and accepted by the majority of the Filipinos.Rather, they are a historical novel, a narrative of historical events, skillfullymixed at different levels and using diverse literary styles. They record whathappened in those fateful days of January and February 1872 and its effects,and predict the same or similar incidents will inexorably be repeated if theagents who intervene constantly and definitively in the Philippines are notmercillessly swept away, namely, despotic and corrupt friars, an ineptgovernment, a people cowed down by oppression, and the tyranny of the few.But the head of the cancer which he wanted to extirpate with all his energy hefound in the friars. They were the ones responsible for the events in Cavite,and Rizal believed he was morally obliged to destroy them, notphysically but135