Review: Reynaldo Ileto’s Pasyon and Revolution: Popular movements in the Philippines, 1840–1910
The masses are underwritten subjects in history. But in Reynaldo Ileto’s Pasyon and revolution: Popular movements in the Philippines, 1840–1910, they take center stage. Ileto offered an alternative interpretation of popular revolts during Spanish and early American colonization using perspectives and sources “from below”. He departed from the mainstream interpretation that “places a premium on the ideas and activities of the Filipino priests and intellectuals”, echoing arguments by John Schumacher concerning nationalist consciousness as a product of local conditions and not the Ilustrados’ exposure to Western liberal education.[1]
Ileto forwarded the pasyon — a metahistorical account of Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection — as the framework used by the masses to appraise their precolonial past, colonial present, and independent future. He argued that although the religious text was intended for pacification, the natives derived a “language” of defiance and liberation from the similarities of their colonial experiences with Christ’s pasyon.[2] Akin to Christ’s resurrection from death, a recurring theme in Ileto’s exploration of the Confradia, the Colorum, the Katipunan and its iterations, and the Santa Iglesia was the transition in states — from darkness to light, slavery to paradise, martyrdom to rebirth, and more.
This review concerns Ileto’s faithfulness in writing a history from below, his unconscious exposure of psychology as a vital auxiliary science to history, and his ironic reinforcement of the strength of economic interpretation in his application of the pasyon framework.
One of the strengths of Ileto’s book was its recognition of the agency of the masses as historical actors who should not be sidelined in history.[3] Unfortunately, this recognition was inconsistent. In his discussion of the Lapiang Malaya, Ileto asserted the need to disembark from “convenient explanations” that reduce religiopolitical societies as “fanatical, irrational, or even ‘feudal’”.[4] In the same breath, he categorized himself and the readers as “modern Filipinos” and religiopolitical societies as the backward kapatid. Similarly, as pointed out by Milagros Guerrero, “Ileto’s suggestion that the Filipino elite used the ‘pasyon language’ of the masses only when they intended to deceive the latter” reinforced notions of gullibility he so preciously rejected.[5]
According to Guerrero, Ileto also engaged in mistranslations and by extension, deterministic arguments to fulfill his framework.[6] Guerrero also brought up how he mostly used sources from the revolt leaders and hastily advanced them as reflective of the collective consciousness of the masses.[7]
From my perspective, some of Ileto’s juxtaposition of pasyon and the masses’ narratives only produced coincidental similarities but not concrete connections. He appeared to apply the pasyon over the masses’ narratives instead of drawing it out from them. I echo Glenn May’s caution on how the rigid employment of ideologies or novel frameworks can lead to erroneous conclusions about nationalism that disregard basic historiographical canons.[8] At the same time, I recognize the creativity and innovation behind Ileto’s dissection of unconventional non-elite sources.
A further manifestation of Ileto’s creativity and innovation was his interrogation of pasyon terms such as loob or inner self, and damay or oneness. At the time of the book’s writing, these terms and the larger Filipinization campaign they were part of — Sikolohiyang Pilipino or Filipino Psychology — were relatively new and understudied.[9] In response to Guerrero’s criticism of his “loose psychological speculation about the role of the pasyon in the history of anticolonial resistance”, Ileto reassured that his book was concerned with language and not psychology.[10] However, in the book itself, he implied that he was fulfilling an “opportunity to study the workings of the popular mind” and described the pasyon as a “mirror of the collective consciousness”.[11]
Instead of denying the unconscious role of psychology in his interpretation, Ileto should have embraced what I argue as a strength of his book. His book was one of the first examples of how psychology — or Sikolohiyang Pilipino even — can be used in historical interpretation. It preceded A history of civilizations where Fernand Braudel, an advocate of “[combining the] efforts of all the social sciences” in writing history, forwarded collective psychology as an auxiliary science to our discipline.[12]
According to Braudel, collective psychology and its strongest manifestation, religion, is responsible for “dictating a society’s attitudes, guiding its choices, confirming its prejudices and directing its actions”.[13] This was similar to how Ileto positioned the pasyon as the framework that directed the masses’ worldview and by extension, their revolts. This positioning of the pasyon was a departure from the usual analysis of popular revolts as motivated by economic conditions.[14]
In his response to Guerrero’s critiques, Ileto asserted that popular revolts were also not inspired by the pasyon.[15] However, in the book, he claimed that the pasyon catalyzed and “prepared” the masses to mimic radical biblical scenarios.[16] Still, in his juxtaposition of the pasyon and the masses’ accounts, Ileto cannot escape from the economic conditions — which he “cautioned” from using — that drove the masses toward resistance.[17] From the Confradia to Santa Iglesia, these societies imagined a future that was not only politically independent but also economically emancipated with no taxes, forced labor, unequal ownership of property, and classes.
Even in what Guerrero described as his faulty derivation of layaw from the Katipunan’s concept of kalayaan, Ileto cannot help but reinforce the economic context. He argued that before the Katipunan’s formation, “kalayaan did not mean ‘freedom’ or ‘independence’” due to its purported roots to layaw or “[parental] satisfaction of one’s needs”.[18] This suggests that nationalist consciousness was primarily an economic issue — material needs were no longer being met due to colonial policies on taxation, labor, or property hence the need to divorce from the entire colonial regime. Ileto chose to deviate from this glaring economic conclusion and ascertained kalayaan’s “connotations of parent-child relationship” to fit his more cultural framework.[19]
Although his book’s attempt at a history from below is not the most successful, it was a provocative, progressive, and enduring work on a history “from within”. Ileto’s level of historical empathy and imagination in interrogating a diverse pool of unconventional sources from the masses, with the assistance of auxiliary disciplines such as psychology, literature, and anthropology, must be emulated.
[1] Reynaldo Ileto, Pasyon and revolution: Popular movements in the Philippines, 1840–1910 (Quezon City, Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1979), 3, 79; John Schumacher, “Philippine higher education and the origins of nationalism,” Philippine Studies 23, no. 1–2 (1975): 56.
[2] Ileto, Pasyon, 11–22.
[3] Ileto, Pasyon, 4.
[4] Ileto, Pasyon, 2, 8.
[5] Milagros Guerrero, “Understanding Philippine revolutionary mentality,” Philippine Studies 29, no. 2 (1981): 242.
[6] Guerrero, “Revolutionary mentality,” 250–251.
[7] Guerrero, “Revolutionary mentality,” 245, 247.
[8] Glenn May, A past recovered: Essays on Philippine history and historiography (Quezon City, New Day Publishers, 1987).
[9] Rogelio Pe-Pua, “Sikolohiyang Pilipino (Filipino psychology): A legacy of Virgilio G. Enriquez,” Asian Journal of Social Psychology 3, no. 1 (2000): 49–52, 54–56.
[10] Guerrero, “Revolutionary mentality,” 241; Reynaldo Ileto, “Critical issues in ‘Understanding Philippine Revolutionary Mentality,’” Philippine Studies 30, no. 1 (1982): 96.
[11] Ileto, Pasyon, 11, 13.
[12] Fernand Braudel, A history of civilizations, trans. Richard Mayne (New York: The Penguin Press, 1994), 9.
[13] Braudel, History, 22.
[14] Maria Luisa Camagay, “Reynaldo Clemena Ileto, Pasyon and Revolution, Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840–1910” Archipel 23, no. 1 (1982): 210; Ileto, Pasyon, 187.
[15] Ileto, “Critical issues,” 97.
[16] Ileto, Pasyon, 19.
[17] Camagay, “Reynaldo Clemena Ileto,” 210.
[18] Ileto, Pasyon, 87.
[19] Ibid.
References
Braudel, Fernand. 1994. A history of civilizations. Translated by Richard Mayne. New York: The Penguin Press.
Camagay, Maria-Luisa. 1982. “Reynaldo Clemena Ileto, Pasyon and Revolution, Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840–1910.” Archipel 23, 1: 208–210.
Guerrero, Milagros. 1981. “Understanding Philippine revolutionary mentality.” Philippine Studies 29, 2: 240–256.
Ileto, Reynaldo. 1979. Pasyon and revolution: Popular movements in the Philippines, 1840–1910. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.
Ileto, Reynaldo. 1982. “Critical issues in ‘Understanding Philippine Revolutionary Mentality.’” Philippine Studies 30, 1: 92–119.
May, Glenn Anthony. 1987. A past recovered: Essays on Philippine history and historiography. Quezon City: New Day Publishers.
Schumacher, John. 1975. “Philippine higher education and the origins of nationalism.” Philippine Studies 23, 1–2: 53–65.
