28 DECEMBER

1838 - Spanish colonial friar Pedro P. Pelaez ridiculously calls attention to the supposed ignorance and the ancient barbaric, "idolatry" practices of the Filipino natives during a bold sermon delivered  before Gov. Andres Camba made in honor of Nuestra Sra. De la Guia; admonishing the Spaniards for  supposedly not doing anything to help the people, Pelaez describes the  natives' old "idolatry" practices as "pitiable," mocking them for lacking  the concept of a supreme being and for giving reverence to "trees, rocks,  reefs and headlands" or their ancestors; the Spanish colonizers who began settling in the Philippines in the 16th century, had destroyed much of the culture and historical records of the Philippines, destroying most traditions of the natives and their system of writing which the Spaniards call as "works of the devil."

Sketch of Leonor Rivera

1881 - Leonor Rivera, the girlfriend  of  Jose Rizal, Filipino patriot and  polymath during the Spanish colonial  period, chides the latter in a letter  for failing to write her earlier;  signed "Taimis" (the name by which  Rizal calls her), Rivera expresses  disgust over Rizal's failure to write  her even as he wrote to her father,  describing him as "like a newly opened  rose, very flushed and fragrant at the  beginning, but afterwards it begins to  wither."

Teodora Alonzo de Rizal with young Leonora Rivera

1896 - Teodora Alonzo de Rizal, the  mother of Jose Rizal y Mercado,  Filipino patriot and polymath  sentenced to die by execution, writes  a letter of appeal imploring the  Spanish colonial authorities to grant  pardon to her son; Alonzo de Rizal, who herself had been persecuted by the Spanish authorities and suffered imprisonment for 2 1/2 years,  writes that the crime of rebellion  attributed to her son "has not been  proven in a conclusive manner" and that  he is in fact "innocent" of the "most  infamous of crimes" against the Mother  Country; Rizal, who wrote books  castigating Spanish friars' abuses  against Filipinos, had earlier been  convicted by the colonial Council of  War of the crimes of rebellion,  sedition, and conspiracy because of  his association with members of the  secret-society-turned-revolutionary- government Kagalanggalangang Katipunan  nang manga Anak nang Bayan following  the outbreak of the Philippine  Revolution against Spain in August  1896; Rizal had indicted a manifesto calling the Katipunan Himagsikan as "highly absurd."


Photo credits:

http://joserizal.info/Biography/man_and_martyr/chapter18.htm
http://triciacampos2007.wordpress.com/2007/11/29/the-9-women-of-rizal/