The Social Cancer, by José Rizal - Home

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