The Social Cancer, by José Rizal - Home
The Social Cancer, by José Rizal - Home
The Social Cancer, by José Rizal - Home
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<strong>The</strong> <strong>Social</strong> <strong>Cancer</strong>, <strong>by</strong> <strong>José</strong> <strong>Rizal</strong> 23<br />
Spain. This the officer declined to permit, for the order was to shoot him in the back. <strong>Rizal</strong> assented with a<br />
slight protest, pointed out to the soldiers the spot in his back at which they should aim, and with a firm step<br />
took his place in front of them.<br />
<strong>The</strong>n occurred an act almost too hideous to record. <strong>The</strong>re he stood, expecting a volley of Remington bullets in<br />
his back--Time was, and Life's stream ebbed to Eternity's flood--when the military surgeon stepped forward<br />
and asked if he might feel his pulse! <strong>Rizal</strong> extended his left hand, and the officer remarked that he could not<br />
understand how a man's pulse could beat normally at such a terrific moment! <strong>The</strong> victim shrugged his<br />
shoulders and let the hand fall again to his side--Latin refinement could be no further refined!<br />
A moment later there he lay, on his right side, his life-blood spurting over the Luneta curb, eyes wide open,<br />
fixedly staring at that Heaven where the priests had taught all those centuries agone that Justice abides. <strong>The</strong><br />
troops filed past the body, for the most part silently, while desultory cries of "Viva España!" from among the<br />
"patriotic" Filipino volunteers were summarily hushed <strong>by</strong> a Spanish artillery-officer's stern rebuke: "Silence,<br />
you rabble!" To drown out the fitful cheers and the audible murmurs, the bands struck up Spanish national<br />
airs. Stranger death-dirge no man and system ever had. Carnival revelers now dance about the scene and<br />
Filipino schoolboys play baseball over that same spot.<br />
A few days later another execution was held on that spot, of members of the Liga, some of them characters<br />
that would have richly deserved shooting at any place or time, according to existing standards, but notable<br />
among them there knelt, torture-crazed, as to his orisons, Francisco Roxas, millionaire capitalist, who may be<br />
regarded as the social and economic head of the Filipino people, as <strong>Rizal</strong> was fitted to be their intellectual<br />
leader. Shades of Anda and Vargas! Out there at Balintawak--rather fitly, "the home of the<br />
snake-demon,"--not three hours' march from this same spot, on the very edge of the city, Andres Bonifacio<br />
and his literally sansculottic gangs of cutthroats were, almost with impunity, soiling the fair name of Freedom<br />
with murder and mutilation, rape and rapine, awakening the worst passions of an excitable, impulsive people,<br />
destroying that essential respect for law and order, which to restore would take a holocaust of fire and blood,<br />
with a generation of severe training. Unquestionably did <strong>Rizal</strong> demonstrate himself to be a seer and prophet<br />
when he applied to such a system the story of Ba<strong>by</strong>lon and the fateful handwriting on the wall!<br />
But forces had been loosed that would not be so suppressed, the time had gone <strong>by</strong> when such wild methods of<br />
repression would serve. <strong>The</strong> destruction of the native leaders, culminating in the executions of <strong>Rizal</strong> and<br />
Roxas, produced a counter-effect <strong>by</strong> rousing the Tagalogs, good and bad alike, to desperate fury, and the<br />
aftermath was frightful. <strong>The</strong> better classes were driven to take part in the rebellion, and Cavite especially<br />
became a veritable slaughter-pen, as the contest settled down into a hideous struggle for mutual extermination.<br />
Dark Andres went his wild way to perish <strong>by</strong> the violence he had himself invoked, a prey to the rising ambition<br />
of a young leader of considerable culture and ability, a schoolmaster named Emilio Aguinaldo. His Katipunan<br />
hovered fitfully around Manila, for a time even drawing to itself in their desperation some of the better<br />
elements of the population, only to find itself sold out and deserted <strong>by</strong> its leaders, dying away for a time; but<br />
later, under changed conditions, it reappeared in strange metamorphosis as the rallying-center for the largest<br />
number of Filipinos who have ever gathered together for a common purpose, and then finally went down<br />
before those thin grim lines in khaki with sharp and sharpest shot clearing away the wreck of the old, blazing<br />
the way for the new: the broadening sweep of "Democracy announcing, in rifle-volleys death-winged, under<br />
her Star Banner, to the tune of Yankee-doodle-do, that she is born, and, whirlwind-like, will envelop the<br />
whole world!"<br />
MANILA, December 1, 1909<br />
What? Does no Caesar, does no Achilles, appear on your stage now? Not an Andromache e'en, not an Orestes,<br />
my friend?