1889 - Filipino reformist Graciano Lopez Jaena's article, "How to deceive the motherland," is
published in La Solidaridad, the publication of illustrados who aim at
representing and advocating the colonial cause of the Philippines
before Spain's parliament, during the Spanish colonial period; Jaena
counters the La Voz de Espana's editorial declaring religion and traditionalism—to
the exclusion of the Spanish language or government reforms—as the only
things that unite the Spanish colony with the metropolis; Jaena's
article castigates the editorial of La Voz de Espana not only for
defending the friars but also for impairing the "national decorum" and
destroying the plans of Spain's Minister of Colonies with regards the
diffusion of the Castillian language in the Philippine Islands; Jaena
writes:
Neither obscurantism and fanaticism nor oppression nor superstitions ever united
nor have united peoples; on the other hand, liberty, rights, love draw
distinct races round the same standard, one aspiration, one destiny.
Finally, La Voz de España lies when it says that the monastic orders preserve the Philippines for Spain. It is a calumny to say that the Filipinos love Spain because of the friars. The Filipinos do not need selfish wet nurses in order to throw themselves into the arms of the mother country and unburden themselves in her maternal lap of their troubles, their complaints and their afflictions. He is a despicable person who would say that because the Filipinos are anti-friar, they are therefore subversives.
