Wednesday, February 22, 2012

22 FEBRUARY

Jose Rizal and Marcelo H. de Pilar
1889 - In a correspondence between Philippine reformist and patriots Jose Mercado Rizal and Marcelo H. del Pilar, the former writes a long message in Tagalog entitled "To the Young Women of Malolos" during the Spanish colonial period; in the letter, Rizal lauds the lasses--daughters of the elites from Malolos, Bulakan-- for their extraordinary courage in petitioning for a language school, having dared ask the  colonial Governor-General Valeriano Weyler earlier in December last year to authorize them to open a night school for them to learn the Spanish language; del Pilar, who would be known as the "Great Propagandist," has prodded Rizal to write the young Bulakenas in the Tagalog langugage in the bid to boost their reformist cause; earlier, Lopez Jaena praised the Malolos Women for their desire to "learn the beautiful language of the mother country" and for which they deserve "devoted support" in the column "Ecos de Ultramarr" in the reformists' organ, La Solidaridad; Rizal, del Pilar, and Lopez-Jaena formed the great triumvirate of the reformist-assimilationist Propaganda movement that  aimed to awaken the Spanish monarch/government as to the needs of its colony, the Philippines, and to make for a closer and more equal association of the archipelago and  supposed motherland, Spain.

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