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By Go Bon Juan
(Editor’s note: The Sixth
Dr. Jose P. Rizal Awards for Excellence awarding ceremony will be
held on June 14, 2008, 7 p.m., at the Kaisa-Angelo King Heritage
Center on Anda and Cabildo streets, Intramuros, Manila.)
Twelve years ago, while preparing
a paper about the ethnic Chinese in the Philippine Revolution to
commemorate the centennial of the Philippine Revolution in 1896, I
was able to cull a lot of materials from the Philippine
Revolutionary Archives about the participation and contribution of
the Chinese to the Philippine Revolution. Foremost among them, of
course, is the pureblooded Chinese General Jose
Ignacio Paua.
But I wondered about the
propaganda movement that preceded the Philippine Revolution. Many of
the leaders and members of the movement were Chinese mestizos, but
were there Chinese in the Philippines who participated in or
rendered any contribution to the movement?
I read Resil Mojares’ Brains of
the Nation (published by the Ateneo de Manila University Press in
2006) and was surprised—and glad—to discover new information
about the Comite de Propaganda in Manila.
The committee, Mojares’ writes,
“may have been responsible for the large number of anti-friar
broadsides or proclamas that circulated in Manila and neighboring
provinces in the 1880s.”
Furthermore, “materials
smuggled in from Spain were shipped via Singapore or Hong Kong to a
Chinese house in Plaza Jolo in Manila and distributed from there.
Another distributing center was the La Gran Bretaña bazaar in
Intramuros owned by Comite member Jose Ramos, a London-educated
Mason,” according to Mojares.
The materials that were smuggled
in from Spain to that “Chinese house” in Plaza Jolo were
propaganda materials prepared by Filipino propagandists with Marcelo
del Pilar and Mariano Ponce at the core of these activities. “They
represented the Manila Comite, ran Solidaridad, staffed Asocacion
Hispano-Filipina, and were active Masons,” Mojares said.
Undoubtedly, that Chinese house
played a great role in distributing propaganda materials in Manila,
which certainly made a great contribution to the propaganda
movement. Unfortunately, we do not know who owned or stayed in the
Chinese house. In other words, who was that Chinese who played a
role in distributing propaganda materials? How was he related to
those Filipino propagandists? Why did they choose this Chinese house
as their distributing center? Why did they entrust this Chinese to
distribute propaganda materials?
I eagerly hope that someday,
somehow, we might be able to identify this “Chinese
propagandist” and locate that “Chinese house in Plaza Jolo in
Manila.”
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