Chapter 3

Ln chapter three, Quibuyen takes up Benedict Anderson's critique of Leon

Ma. Guerrero's translation of Rizal's novels, and the pattern Anderson finds

in Guerrero's mistranslations. Acknowledging the validity of Anderson's cri-

tique of Guerrero, Quibuyen, however, rightly takes issue with the former's

patently false claim that "Filipino" in the novels refers only to creoles, and

"people" to the inhabitants of Calamba or Manila. Anderson is, as I see it, one

more interpreter of Rizal who seems to have read only his public writings and

not his letters. Quibuyen has shown clearly that even the novels reject such

an understanding.

(Indeed, I have found pure-blooded "Indios" referred to by

Spaniards in particular cases as "Filipinos" even in sixteenth- and seven-

teenth-century documents). However, contrary to Quibuyen, it was not only

in the struggle among the ilustrados in the 1880s that the general shift in

meaning occurred (88). Burgos had habitually spoken of all born in the Phil-

ippines as Filipinos (Schumacher 1999, 91, 103, 105, 133, 162, etc.).

More importantly, Quibuyen critiques Anderson's explanation for

Guerrero's dystranslations. For Anderson, Rizal was a patriot; Guerrero a

nationalist. But for Anderson, "nationalism in our time dreams of purities and

finds it hard to linger carifiosarnente over the oxymoron, 'pure mix'." In other

words, modern nationalism has a predominantly ethnic character, for which

there is much sad evidence.

It is not hard for Quibuyen to show that such was

not the case for Rizal, who did not make distinctions based on the varying

ethnic parentage of his fellow-Filipinos, and rather than erasing the past,

embraced all who loved the country of their birth. All through the book

Quibuyen rejects the excluding sense of nationalism as belonging to Rizal.

Again, we may observe that Quibuyen has studied the letters; Anderson, the

novels alone, out of the context of the private Rizal. As Quibuyen well...