Over a century since it was invented in Europe during the 19th century, we now know that the idea of a nation is a myth, a necessary one.
A people had to be convinced that aside from sharing a place they can call their own, they are also united under one “Spirit” that permeates their culture and language. Such collective soul, called volkgeist by the Germans and diwa by Filipinos, finds its way in the common values that shape the national character.
The collapse of empires during the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe led to the rise of nations as different peoples now wanted to assert their differences. Territories had to be drawn, often violently, and flags raised to signify control or sovereignty. Revolutions had to be fought to gain independence from colonizers.
Coat of arms, flags and other symbols had to be created to consist the national iconography. The lives and struggles of martyrs and heroes of the revolution had to be written and their names inscribed on the monuments and walls of the national pantheon. The whole history had to be rewritten to reflect the point-of-view of the native and no longer that of the colonizer. Respect for the flag and images of heroes had to be imposed. The narrative of the nation parallels that of religion.
The Filipino illustrados who went to study in Europe in the 19th century were influenced by this idea of nationhood. They began to think of themselves as a separate people worthy of being called Filipinos, having a culture totally distinct from that of the colonizer.
Jose Rizal’s novels were subversive because they were the first literary expression of the national sentiment. The Propaganda Movement carried on the campaign to promote awareness of the Philippines as a nation worthy of being granted the same rights and liberties that the Spaniards were enjoying.
The Spaniards in the Philippines were terrified by this act of self-awareness of the Filipinos. They knew the sparks that Rizal created in his books would result in a conflagration that would be hard to control. Indeed it happened. In 1896, the Katipunan revolt began.
Among the illustrados who eventually joined the Revolution was Antonio Luna, who had studied military strategy in Europe shortly before coming back to his country to fight. Luna was a skillful tactician but he was frustrated by the lack of professionalism in Aguinaldo’s army and, worse, the betrayals and infighting within the ranks.
He wanted to unite the Katipuneros, to make them think that they are fighting not just for their towns or regions but for the whole country. To help drive his point home, he ordered that all soldiers in Aguinaldo’s army wear the same uniform.
Despite his efforts to professionalize the army and apply military science in their fight against the Americans, General Luna was overwhelmed by Aguinaldo’s parochial leadership and self-interest. A temperamental person who could be uncompromising with his principles, Luna was believed to have been ordered assassinated by Aguinaldo, repeating the treachery he earlier committed upon Bonifacio.
This tragic story about Antonio Luna is narrated in Jerrold Tarog’s full feature film “Heneral Luna,” now showing in selected theaters here in Cebu. The film takes an anti-hero approach, depicting Luna as an intelligent yet idiosyncratic and temperamental general given to violent tendencies. As such, he reminds me of General Patton in the US Army during World War II. The film thus breaks the usual mythologizing of this Katipunero, known to most as the brother of the painter Juan Luna (who himself shot his wife in a fit of jealousy).
What the film fails to break is the myth of the Katipunan Revolution being an event that happened only in the Katagalogan or mainly in the Southern Luzon. This myth is reflected in the eight rays in the Philippine flag which represent the eight provinces in Luzon that rose up against the Spaniards.
This is not true, of course. The Moros in Mindanao always resisted the colonizers. In Cebu, the local members of the Katipunan rose up against the Spaniards during the Tres de Abril Revolt and continued to defend the Philippine Republic against the Americans even as Manila and most of the country had capitulated to the Americans at the turn of the century.
Surely there was contact between Cebuano Katipuneros and their counterparts in Manila. In 1899, the Cebuano revolutionaries celebrated independence by raising the flag of the Philippine Republic. One wonders if Luna ever communicated or gave orders to Cebuano revolutionaries who held their ground against the Americans.
There was no hint of this in the film. In fact, there was no hint at all of the fighting that took place outside Luzon, even after Manila surrendered to the Americans. I heard that Tarog is planning a sequel, one that focuses on Gregorio Del Pilar. Somebody in Cebu should make a film about Leon Kilat.