HERO’S RETURN, ARREST, AND

DEPORTATION
By: Nanette G.Villegas
 HIGHLIGHTS:

 Interviews with Despujol

 Inaugurates the Liga Filipina
 The Jesuit Intervention
 Security Measures surrounding
Deportation
 Bonifacio founds the Katipunan
• June 26, 1892- Rizal Arrived in Manila.
• It was a very different homecoming from his last. Now he was
returning as his country’s most famous man.
• The leader and Director of Philippine Political Aspirations, and
the Legendary doctor, the wonder-worker.
• Leaving Malacanan Palace, he was quickly recognized in the
streets and followed by a growing number of people, all begging
him to advise them on their complaints.
• At seven in the evening Rizal was received by the Governor-
General.
At the first interview, a very short one with Despujol the latter gave
permission for Francisco Mercado to return unmolested from Hongkong.
Paciano might return and present himself; a decision would then be taken.
About Josefa and Trinidad the Governor-General reserved judgement,
telling Rizal to come and see him again the following Wednesday.

In one of the houses he visited, where his identity was known only to his
host, the topic of the conversation at dinner was the newly-returned
countryman whom none of those present had ever seen. Anecdotes were
told of his bravery and accomplishments, people voicing the hope of
meeting the young man someday and shaking his hand.
He did to reveal himself, the old man stared at him unbelievingly, then
kissed his hands, calling him hero and redeemer.

On the evening of Wednesday 29th, as arranged, he was again received by

Despujol, with whom he remained for over one-and-a-half hours. As a
result of his liberal policies, Despujol was extremely unpopular with the
friars, who treating him as another De La Torre, were already working hard
in Madrid to procure his removal from office. Like Terrero he could not
ignore the friars, but he did not intend having his mind made up- for him.
The interview went well.
Next day Rizal was received again, when the Borneo project was
discussed, Despujol expressing his rooted objection to it, but asking Rizal
to see him again the following Sunday. In the meantime he permitted
the sisters to return from Hongkong.

At the next meeting Rizal thanked him for this concession. Despujol
asked wether he was still set on returning to Hongkong and continuing
with the Borneo project, to which he replied that he was. Another
meeting was arranged for the next day, but was later postponed till two
days later.
On the same day on the last meeting, Sunday 3 of Jul, Rizal attended a
large evening gathering in a secluded house in the Manila ward of
Tondo, at which nearly every person of note in the progressive
movement was present. At this meeting he formally launched the Liga
Filipina.
In a quit, balaqnced speech he explained that the scene of battle had
shifted from Madrid to the Philippines, it having been proved beyond
doubt that nothing could be achieved by campaigning solely overseas.
The country had now to unite to achieve its own redemption from
within, and he proposed the Liga Filipina as the best instrument by
which this could be brought about.
To everyone present Rizal was a named revered. Most of them had
read his books and articles. All were aware that he had risked his
life to come among them. When he had finished speaking, the
Liga, wether people fully believed in it or not – some of the older
ones did – received unanimous acceptance.

At 11A.M. on the next day, Tuesday 5 July, every house he had
visited since arrival was searched by the authorities. What appears
to have originally suspicion was that on his northward visit by rail
most of the houses he went to were those of known freemasons.
The following day he was received by thye Government-General again
Despujol asked if he proposed returning tto Hongkong and again he
replied that he diid.

Conversation continued on other subjects, Despujol biding his time.

Then he said that there was anti-friar handbills in the luggage Rizal had
brought from Hongkong. Rizal denied it. Calmly, Despujol produced
one, a handbill which Rizal had written in Spanish under the
pseudonym “Fr. Jacinto” and had printed in Hongkong, written in his
usual pungent and humorous style, highly irreverent to the Church, but
which in Spain could have circulated freely. Despujol said it had been
found during a search of Rizal’s luggage at the Hotel de Oriente.
He denied it absolutely. As he knew, even the possibility of a
stray copy having accidentally been mixed up in his luggage
was unrealistic. His sister had done his packing, and with
them accidents of that kind did not happen.

His view, of which he remained convinced for the rest of his

life, was that the handbills could only have been planted in
his luggage at the hotel by agents of the friars.
Despujol did not give him time to explain. Whom the
Governor-General asked, did the pillows and mats in the
luggage belong to? Rizal replied that there were his sister
Lucia’s. For some reason, in the heat of the moment,
Despujol had the impression that the reply was a cowardly
attempt to shift the blame to a woman, and he decided to get
enough. He told his visitor he could consider himself under
arrest.
It was a gentlemanly arrest, entirely different from the way Spaniards
usually treated Filipinos on such occasions, and it throws into full light
the influence of Rizal’s personality, which is the only explanation of it.
Where others were tortured and treated in other abominable ways,
Spaniards ever laid a hands on him.

Accompanied by Despujol’s nephew, he was driven in one of the

Governor-General’s carriages to Fort Santiago, where he was assigned
quite a large and not all badly furnished room. He was received by the
prison governor. He was not allowed to write, and the guards at the cell
door had orders to shoot at sight any attempting to signal to him from
the beach, which was visible from one of the cell windows.
For Despujol, who did not consider Rizal so dangerous as the
friars did, a simple way out of the matter would be to do what
Terrero had done, and tell him to go. He was already in serious
difficulties with the friars, and he had doubts about Rizal’s
sencirity. Faced with the additional fact of the discovery of the
handbills, he could not with wisdom continue to resist friar
demands that Rizal be arrested.
In the conflict between the Filipino progressives and the friars,
the Jesuits occupied a privileged position of neutrality. Though
they could not openly admit it, there was much which they too
did not care for about the friars. The Ateneo itself was the
Jesuits’ unspoken comment on friar education.

The Superior of the Jesuits at this moment was Pablo Pastells,

whom Rizal, thinking of his schooldays, had once described as
‘my best friend, the mst distinguished and most travelled of the
Jesuits missionaries.
Pastelle was aware that, rather than let the friars take their
revenge on Rizal, it would be a far greater triumph to the
Church if he could be won back to the Christian obedience he
had always shown at the Ateneo, made to retract all he had
written against the Church, and perhaps later even put his pen
to work in the interests of the Church. Pastelle knew that Rizal
had been very religious, and believed he would be responsive to
reasoned argument.
Pastells’ alternative suggestion to the Governor-General was that Rizal
be deported to one of the rare Parishes under Jesuit control, where the
priests would undertake the task of bringing about his retraction.
Despujol, more inclined to the Jesuits than to the friars, listened and
was resolved.

Two days after the arrest a proclamation appeared over Despujol’s

signature stating that Rizal was to be deported to one of the islands of
the South.
The exact place of deporatation, agreed between Despujol and
Pastells, was revealed to only one person, the commanding general, to
whom was entrusted the movement of the prisoner together with an
order to proceed with the utmost secrecy.

In his cell, at dusk on 14 July, the prisoner was requested by the
nephew to be prepared to leave at ten in the night; he was to b
deported.

Rizal was to be deported to Dapitan, a remote town on the great

southern island of Mindanao, the second largest of the Philippines – a
Jesuit town.
In a despatch to the Ultramar the Governor-General said that the
press, the religious corporations, the Spaniards, and public
opinion in the country had learned of his decision ‘with
enthusiasm’.

It was the end of Rizal’s political career. It was also the virtual end
of the Liga Filipina, which without inspirer and leader clung on to
life in a spasmodic fashion for a year or so, then petered out.
In its stead arose an organization more violently aimed. Among
those who had attended the meeting at which the La Liga had
been launched was a 29-year-old Andres Bonifacio, who had
re4ad El Felibusterismo and been profoundly impressed by it.

That evening he had met Rizal for the first time, and while
impressed by him as a thinker and moral leader, he had doubts
about the Liga, feeling that the pace it set was too slow.
When Rizal was imprisoned and deported, it was immediately
plain to Bonifacio that the Liga was doomed, leaving the Filipinos
no alternative to more radical action.

On the night when the announcement of the forthcoming

depoartation appeared in the government gazette, Andres Bonifacio
and a small group, seven in all, formed the Katipunan, a secret
society dedicated to the aim of severance from Spain by means of
armed revolution, and one of those emblems is embodided today in
the National Flag of the Philippines.