diced b Jos e S. Arc a, - non

particularly, the Franciscans personified by Fray Damaso and Fray Salvi inthe novel Noll me tangere.Fray Joaquin de Coria in Madrid was the Commissar of the FranciscanOrder in 18864870. Perhaps it,was his activities that gave Rizal reasons forhis view of the Franciscans. In 1869, the Commissar published a series ofletters—I shall refer to these below—which expressed totally negativejudgments about the Filipino secular clergy, accusing them as inhuman andanti-Spanish, but mentioning no names. But Fr. Burgos answered in equallyharsh terms, addressing himself, however, to the friars, mentioning thecommissar by name several times. Two years after this epistolary exchangein the Madrid papers, Jose Burgos was executed in Bagumbayan. Who was orwere responsible for his death? Jose Rizal must have thought it was the friars,or, at least, Coria, must have been one of them.What reasons did Rizal have for aiming against the friars, and moreparticularly, the Franciscans, this terrible accusation? We do not know sincehe never said so in his writings. Was he the first to defend this opinion or didhe, rather, popularize it? The events in 1872 in Cavite and their tragic sequel,continue today—in good measure, at least—to belong to the realm of mysterydespite the distance of time from which we view it and the scholars'continuing research to find an adequate answer. Soon after the news of theevents in Cavite was known through the press, the most contradictoryopinions began to surface, most of them, however, without any solid basis."One of the newspapers that contributed in an outstanding way to form anopinion on the causes that led to the Cavite mutiny was certainly the liberalEl Eco Filipino, published and edited in Madrid by Federico Lerena andManuel Regidor, both of them Philippine-born Spaniards. The first reactionof this publication to the events was surprise and condemnation of the mutiny(5 February 1872). A commentary on the execution of the priests JoseBurgos, Mariano Gomez, and Jacinto Zamora appeared in the issue for4 February, since their involvement in the events was also a surprise to theeditors. But they did not form any judgment as there was no officialinformation on what had happened. Fifteen days later, despite the lack ofreliable information, El Eco Filipino decided to "come down to the field ofhypothesis" and proceeded to "lay before the public the causes whichprobably must have led [authorities] to suspect most of those imprisoned,who, it is inferred from personal letters, were the ones the official report sayshad been closely followed using coedential reports and notices," since theywere considered "with reason to be the instigators of the public disorder."137