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Transcript
• PSR 31 (1983): 85-92 BETWEEN STRUCTURES AND PEOPLE: SOME THOUGHTS ON THE SOCIOLOGICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF ILEro'S PASYONAND REVOLUTION ANTONIO M. LA Vlt'tA Ateneo de Manila University • • Implicit In Ileto'« Pasyon and Revolution is the use of an ifltetpretattve, specifically phenomenologiCIIl, apprOllCh to the undetBtandtng of mclDl reality. The author elaborates Ileto's use of phenomenological sociology, /Uld mggestB how other sociological perspective couldbe harnessed to enhance [urthet interpretations of similar events; If sociology, to paraphrase Peter Berger (1963), begins with a curiosity and a passion to understand society, then the study of history is an integral task for this enterprise. Indeed, there is an intimate link between sociology and history: history offers an immensely rich fund for sociological data; sociology, in turn, provides frameworks from which to understand and interpret history. This note is an attempt to demonstrate the latter point. It aims specifically to identify the sociological theories implicit in Reynaldo C. Ileto's historical work, Pasyon and Revolution (1979). understanding of how the masses, in particular the Tagalog peasants, perceived the events of 1840 to 1910, a period characterized by social unrest and the rise of popular movements in Luzon. These movements include the Cofradia revolt led by Hermano Pule; the Katipunan of Bonifacio; the 1896 revolution and its aftermath, Sakay's last stand; and finally, the Salvador-led uprising in 1910. l1eto hopes that an understanding of these movements "from within" would provide us a set of conceptual tools, a "grammar," that would help explain religious-political popular movements of the past and the present (like the Lapiang Malaya Suicide March of 1967), an explanation that will be fair to the participants, an explanation arising from doing a history from below. This note is divided into three parts. The firet gives a summary of Ileto's study. The • l1eto's methodology differs from the second attempts to draw out the sociological . dominant tradition in historical scholarship, theories implicit in Ileto's work. The third that of focusing solely on how the illustrado presents a critique of his choice of theoretical class perceived the revolution and the colonial position - one necessarily limited to a specific status of the Philippines; this, often, at the range of sociological theories. This section also expense of neglecting the meaning of this includes recommendations on alternative situation to the masses who constituted the perspectives which could complement Ileto's revolution's mass base. For Ileto, it is unfair framework. to assume that the views of the masses were "formless, inchoate and meaningless" apart Pasyon and Revolution." from their illustration in the elite's though, A Summary What Ileto then does is to search for this Ileto's stated aim is to understand how the meaning. To do this, he uses traditional and traditional mind, the consciousness of the non-traditional sources. His traditional sources supposedly backward masses, operates in include documents like American and Spanish relation to questions of social change. documents and previous accounts by other Specifically, what Ileto wants to achieve is an historians. His non-traditional sources cover 85 86 religious and literary texts - poems, songs, scattered autobiographies, confessions" prayers and folk sayings. Note 'that the use of non-traditional sources is integral to writing a history from below. According to Ileto, a language contains within it the history of its speakers and expresses a unique way of relating to the world. To use only American, Spanish or lllustrado sources would inevitably introduce an elite bias on the interpretation of events. Thus Ileto's methodology is to let the masses speak with their own words, in a language which come to us today through the texts they have left behind. PHILIPPI~E SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW discovers again and again are themes in the pasyon which the participants interpreted as justifications for their actions. These themes and the meanings they communicated to the peasants were not flxed, but rather depended on the socio-historical situation. At times, the pasyon encouraged subservience and resignation. But during periods of social ferment, attributed to economic and political factors, the pasyon themes became a call to -Iive in the here and now, thus encouraging revolution and instilling hope among the' masses. This revolutionary potential of the pasyon . Ileto's thesis is that 'we cannot dismiss the . . was possible because of the dominant role it religious nature of the popular movementsplayed in the lives of the peasants. According from the Cofradia to the Sakdal - as to Ileto, the pasyon was not' just sung, heard aberrations, fanaticisms, nativism and or celebrated by the masses in the 1800's, "it millenarianism. We cannot reject and disparage was lived, both individually and socially, the cultural contexts from which these during holy week and oftentimes beyond it movements arose. In fact, Ileto says that we (p, 28):~ It was an activity the people looked can understand them only if we study these . forward to, an occasion for self-renewal, for' cultural contexts. A major cultural coritext, "liberating" oneself and one's community. It Ileto argues, is noted in the Tagalog's folk was no. surprise, therefore, to find that the religious traditions and values which, inspite ( masses saw the struggle against Spain in terms of their seemingly other-worldly nature, of the pasyon. The other-worldly "liberation" contained latent, possibly revolutionary of the pasyon became a call for a concrete meanings. What Ileto does is to show how liberation of the people and of Inangbayan. these traditions, specifically the pasyon, fundamentally shaped the style of the And the masses fought the Spaniards when movements and uprisings. He elaborates how the situation called for it. But the rationale the pasyon. tradition had' provided' a for peasant participation in these events language for the masses to articulate .their cannot be found in the democratic and values, ideals, and even hopes of liberation. He republican ideas that the illustrados brought demonstrates how the themes of a lost back from Europe. It was rooted, rather, in the consciousness which the pasyon gave paradise, suffering, the strenghtening of ioob, liwanag, brotherhood, conflict and struggle, them, this. "collective consciousness" that evil and selfishness, journey, freedom, Christ's made participation in the popular movements meaningful. second coming - all drawn from. in the pasyon - contributed to the transformation The bulk of Ileto's book marshalls case of what was previously a tool for pacification studies to demonstrate the pasyon thesis. into a tool for revolution. The first case to be analyzed is the Cofradia de Juan de Dios, a movement founded What was it in the pasyon that shaped and led by Apolinario de la Cruz. Ileto revolutionary consciousness of the masses? . Ileto answers this by' going over the texts of. studied the letters, poems and other writings of de la Cruz and his followers, the the pasyon and those left behind by persons prayers and rites of the Cofradia, the centr~ who participated in the movements. What he • WI BETWEEN STRUcrURES AND PEOPLE role de la Cruz played in the movement, and the like. What he found in studying these texts is the dominance of certain pasyon themes as mentioned earlier. From them, Ileto makes sense out of this 1841 uprising. He says that this was not simply a blind reaction to oppressive forces in colonial society; "it was a conscious act of realizing certain possibilities of existence that the members were made conscious of through reflection upon certain mysteries and signs (p. 39)." These possibilities and the very act of reflection upon certain "signs" and "mysteries" were embedded in their consciousness through the pasyon. • • The rest of the book follows this line of thinking. After the Cofradia revolt, Ileto studies the Katipunan (the central role of Bonifacio, the differing conceptions of the struggle between the masses and the elites, the structures and rites of the Katipunan, its secrecy, the poems of Jacinto, and so on), the 1896 revolution and its aftermath (the success of the illustrados in imposing their own definition of revolution, Aguinaldo's central role in this success, the masses' reaction to this, the Malolos Congress, the emergence of "anti-revolutionary" movements among the peasantry as a reaction to what they perceived to be as the betrayal of the revolution by the elite, the capitulation by the latter before the Americans), the New Katipunan (the continuous resistance of various peasant movements, the central roles of Sakay and Rios, the anting-anting, the Rizal cult), and fmally the Salvador-led uprising of 1910 (its continuity with Sakay, Bonifacio and de la Cruz-inspired movements). In studying not only the documented data about these events but also the literary and religious texts. the practices and rituals, the subjective world view of the participants these movements, Ileto identifies a pattern in all these events: the presence of pasyon themes, to wit: the central role of Christ-like figures, the necessity of personal conversion, the themes of loob, liwanag and lakaran, the anting-anting, the definition of liberation as Kalayaan and not Independencia, the resolute and almost obstinate will to continue the struggle, the firm hope in the future, and above all, the. walking towards death without fear and trembling. No ideology, no political conviction, neither backwardness r or frustration, can explain these phenomena. For Ileto, all these made sense only in the light of the pasyon. Ileto's Theoretical Framework Ileto does not explicitly state his theoretical framework; the task belongs to us. Note, however, that this attempt to identify the sociological underpinnings of Ileto's work will be limited to a specific range of contemporary sociological theories. Ileto, we must also note, uses an interdisciplinary approach in his study. Other than sociology. he also makes extensive use of anthropological theory (e.g, Levi-Strauss' structuralism) and literary criticism. For this paper, we will limit ourselves to certain sociological perspectives. Although Ileto does not give an explicit position with regard to his sociological framework, his effort in writing a history from below and the methodology he appropriates make it clear that his framework belongs to the interpretative or humanistic school of sociology. What we see in Pasyon and Revolution is not merely an objective world of social facts and processes, but of concrete persons caught up in, and trying to make sense out of, a turbulent and unstable world. This world is clearly portrayed not just as an "imposition" upon mass consciousness but as a reality the masses interact with, meaningfully respond to, even change and recreate. The subjective consciousness of the masses, their attempt to makelsense out of what was happening around them, is emphasized in the book. As such, a concern with the significance of language pervades entire work. Language is seen as that on which the constitutiori of this world as 88 PHILIPPINE SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW meaningful to the masses depended upon. . symbolic interactionist's view. He also asks: Thus, lleto's extensive textual analyses. We what gave the masses this capacity of meaning-giving, of recognizing each other's also get a sense of social reality as not of pure order, of society as not static, but of an . gestures and behavior? Ileto answers that it was the pasyon: The pasyon made it possible unfmished social world, of a society continually in the process of being for the. masses to acquire a shared subjective state, a .shared view of the world, a shared constructed. Finally, to accent lleto's humanistic perspective, we 'see that the masses response to socio-historical events. This process was not a' merely individual one, but a are portrayed as people, not facts; as persons, social one as well. The pasyon, for those who not robots; as free actors in an existirig but dynamic social world interacting, joined the movements, became the reconstructuring, changing, creatively starting-point, the touchstone of a' common responding, even defying this world. language, of a paramount reality. The pasyon consciousness became their stock knowledge; To further specify these' points, let me cite it gave them what Schutz called "the sense the important influence of phenomenology in of an absolute reality" that shaped and lleto's work. Indeed, Ileto's. aim to arrive at a guided all social. events. The pasyon conshistorical perspective from within makes it ciousness became the frame of reference inevitable for him to use phenomenology. His which enabled the masses to respond to method is phenomenological, if by such what was happening in their world. method we mean an attempt to suspend preconceived biases and attitudes. His use of An example of how the pasyon gave the literary, religious and biographical texts, rather masses the capacity to interpret each other's than illustrado writings or foreign documents, behavior is lleto's account (pp. 79-80) of is an indication' of this phenomenological how Hermano Pule and others -like him methdology. It is also clear that Ileto asks the were perceived by ordinary peasants: same questions about the masses the way Alfred Schutz, following M~ Weber, asked of ... But even more than the memory of a ordinary men: "why and how do actors come specific' man and a specific movement, it to acquire common subjective states in a was the validity of the pasyon tradition that made it possible for ordinary folk to situation? how do they create a common view recognize the appearance of other of the world?" The creation and Christ-like figures, each bringing the same maintenance of intersubjectivity is a clear message of hope that Apolinario problem in Ileto's attempt to explain popular brought. movements. His answer to this sociological (also philosophical) question .is close to The process by which the pasyon Schutz's and the' symbolic interactionist's facilitated a common social world for the answer. masses can be seen also in Ileto's account The symbolic interactionist would answer the above questions by saying that the masses were able to share a common vision ·and a common response because of their capacity to contruct symbolic environments (Turner 1978). This capacity to interpret, define, map, symbolize and evaluate each other's gesture and behavior made it possible for the masses to respond collectively to what was .happening around them. But Ileto goes further than the (p. 76) of the Cofradia's Aritao commune: Returning to the Aritao phenomenon ... it is logical for the cofrades to have perceived their expulsion from the towns as a further 'dying' to a past characterized by hierarchical social patterns and relationships . . . Being a community apart heightened the bonds of solidarity among the brothers and sisters of the Cofradia, bringing them a step closer to the ideal of perfect unity, • • • • BETWEEN STRUcrURES AND PEOPLE The book contains many other accounts of how the pasyon shaped the masses' worldview, how this helped them recognize each other's gestures and behavior, and how this aided them in arriving at a creative and collective response to the events of their world. I think that phenomenology and symbolic interactionism helped Ileto to arrive at this interpretation. It is important to point out, though, that Ileto's perspective also differs significantly that of Herbert Blumer and Alfred Schutz. For Ileto, the social world was not an illusion; it was not a world which existed only because the masses believed and convinced themselves about its existence. The social world of the masses, for Ileto, did exist. It was a world that existed independent of the masses, a world they shared with the illustrados and the colonizers. It was an objective reality, an objective facticity. The point of the movements was precisely to respond creatively to this objective world. Deto stresses this important point, but gives more weight to the subjective response of the masses to this facticity; and in doing so, he discovered a link between collective consciousness and the pasyon, which is also part of the objective reality. Let me elaborate this interaction between the objective and subjective worlds by showing the possible influence of Peter, Berger and Thomas Luckmann's sociology on Ileto's work. Berger and Luckmann (1963) suggest that there are three dialectical moments in the social construction of reality. They see society, first, as basically a human product, a result of man's externalization. As then, by the process of objectivation, this human product we call society becomes an objective reality, something "out there," independent of the particular subjects within that reality. This objective would now begins to influence and shape these subjects. At the same time, the subjects respond creatively to this objective reality. This would be the third dialectical moment, the internalization of the objective world. Again, we must stress that this is a dia- 89 lectical process: man makes society; society is objective, society makes man. One implication is that there is an objective social reality (facts and structures) and a subjective social reality (meaning, response). Ileto recognizes the presence not only of both objective and subjective realities, but the presence of "multiple subjective realities," a point also noted in Berger and Luckrnann's sociology. In fact, one of the main insights Ileto emphasizes is the divergent perspectives of the elite's and masses' conception of what the revolution was all about. This meant that for these two groups, the social situation was objectively the same: the colonial state of the country. The difference laid in how this reality was perceived, explained and given meaning. For the masses participating in popular movements, the purpose of the struggle was to attain Kalayaan, a total kind of liberation - involving a self-cleansing, the conversion of the whole community, a liberation not only from Spanish and American domination, but from all forms of injustice, oppression and evil. For the masses, this would be the time . . . when society would be turned on its head, when all men would be brothers, leaders would be Christ-like, all forms of oppression would end and property would be shared; in other words, when their image of Kalayaan would turn into lived experience (p. 257). This vision of liberation contrasts with the elite's conception as articulated in the Malolos Republic: the image is not that of Kalayaan but of Independencia. The purpose of the struggle was centered on liberation from Spain and ultimately, the United States. This divergence of perceptions is explained by the different meaning-giving apparatus that these classes had: the elite being influenced by European ideas of democracy and republicanism, the masses by the pasyon. I Even as Ileto recognizes the existence of an objective social world, his stress rests on the 90 subjective aspect of the dialectic. This; I.. will say. later, is both the strength and the ·weakness of his work. Given his aim and the methodology he uses, the focus is not surprising. In the end.. what lleto tells us is that the masses were able to respond creatively to the objective social situation, one characterized by social ferment rooted in economic and political factors, because of the consciousness the pasyon was able to give them. It was this consciousness that served as the legitimating device for their participation in popular movements. Using Berger's words, it was the pasyon that made possible a common symbolic universe for the peasant, within which he could locate himself, within which his biography became intimately linked up with the biographies of other individuals, ·peasants and illustrados alike; This, in turn, made it possible for him to see himself as linked to history. • PHILIPPINE SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW to see beyond the loss of a human life. Berger (1967:52), writing about religion, proposes that: Every human society. in' the last resort, are banded together in the face of death. The power of religion depends, in the last resort, upon the credibility of the banners it puts in the hands of men as they. stand before death, or more accurately, as they walk, inevitably towards it.' In summary, we have said that Ileto's aim makes it inevitable for him to fa:ll back on humanistic or .interpretative sociology. We have shown this by noting that his methodology is phenomenological, one which acquires a perspective from within, rather than imposes categories from the outside. We have .also shown how the symbolic interactionist's emphasis on the process of symbol-giving and symbol-interpreting surfaces in Ileto's It was this pasyon consciousness, awakened . framework. And finally, we pointed out 'by the objective social reality, that ordered his. .Berger's influence on lleto, noting" that roles, his priorities, his life. It was the pasyon 'although Ileto recognizes the objective reality of the social situation,' his emphasis lies in the that legitimated his act of defiance against his subjective reality of the masses' consciousness society, against the "routine'" of his everyday and their response to this objective world. life. It was the pasyon consciousness that This is my intelligent guess, given Ileto's text helped him construct and reconstruct his and my limited knowledge of sociological world, ordered his experience, and shielded theories. As I said earlier, this explicitation of him from the terror of anomie ., a real danger in that period of unrest. It was the pasyon, Ileto's framework is necessarily incomplete' because of his . interdisciplinary;approach. ·.belonging to the human enterprise we ca:ll Religion, that made his response to his world A Critique ·creative, legitimate, and meaningful. There is no doubt that Ileto's work is a Let me cite two quotations, one each from significant step towards a better understanding . Berger and Ileto, to underline how the ideas both of Philippine history 'and society. It of Berger may have influenced lleto. Ileto,. infuses a new perspective into a study of the describing how Felipe Salvador faced death, . Philippine revolution. It' answers to a need to writes (p. 311): acquire a post-nationalist perspective in . understanding our country's past and present. Faced with the certainty of death, It also illustrates what a history from below Salvador and countless other patriots looks like. before him could live out their fmal moments in joyful expectation because His sociological perspective, at least as I see they have been cultura:lly prepared for it. it, suits his research objective. To understand They could be completely serene in loob the popular movements from within, to arrive while around them reigned the anguish and emotional outpourings of those who failed at a history from below, is possible only with, . I • . • BETWEEN STRUcrURES AND PEOPLE the use of phenomenology, symbolic interactionism, and Berger's synthesis of structuralism and social psychology. Another aspect of Ileto's approach is his interdisciplinary framework. Indeed, lleto's work is a genuine contribution not only to historical scholarship, but also to sociology and political science. His work points out to us the exciting possibilities of interpretative sociology, and to the impossibility of arriving at a history from below from a strictly naturalistic, specifically functionalist, perspective. At the same time, and this we turn to now, lleto's work also points out the weakness and the inadequacies of interpretative sociology. In particular, it shows a shortcoming implicit in the interpretative framework. Although Ileto recognizes the existence of an objective social reality, his interpretation is still heavily weighted on the subjective view of that reality. Although this is an important contribution, we must grant that this perspective remains a partial one. In the end, I think , Ileto limits himself to an understanding of only an aspect of a complex reality. Given his aim, this is inevitabl~. Nevertheless, I believe that more emphasis should be given to the objective reality especially the importance of economic, political and structural factors in precipitating the uprisings. I grant to the dramaturgists, symbolic interactionists and ethnomethodologists that a great part of what we, call "reality" rests, on people's perception of a particular situation. This, in turn, is one inadequacy of naturalistic sociological theories. At the same time, I am .convinced that objective reality carries importance and needs to be equally stressed. One application of Berger's theory, as discussed in The Sacred Canopy for example, also provides the same overemphasis and I reading Berger and Ileto makes me wonder whether a full synthesis between naturalistic and interpretative sociologies is at all possible. This statement, however, does not at all 91 negate Ileto's contributions. It only serves to point out the need to complement his wosk with other, less interpretative, less phenomenological perspectives. It is obvious to me that lleto's work must be complemented with alternative perspectives, if a dynamic, more comprehensive history on the popular movements and on the Philippines is to be written. The functionalist paradigm, the conflict view and even the evaluative position, despite their shortcomings, are examples of complementing standpoints. The functionalist paradigm, for instance, can help us understand the objective social situation which did exist, and to which the masses were inserted in and responded to. In lleto's work, we see that those who joined the movements did so because of a perception that a break occured in their normal and routine lives. This break awakened the pasyon con sciousne ss' la ten t revolu tionary possibilities. This break occurred because of socioeconomic and political developments in the objective social reality. The functionalist paradigm is necessary to explain what held together this normal and routine life, this equilibrium, the life before the break, before the occurrence what Berger calls the "alternation" of these peasants. The functionalist paradigm is, of course, inadequate in dealing with the break itself, the dynamics of the alternation or conversion. To label this as a "dysfunction" would be to ignore the presence of real conflict in the peasant's social world. Here, the use of conflict theories would provide us a better tool of understanding why the break occurred . To be fair, Ileto recognizes the above points. What he is saying is that these perspectives have been overemphasized in past research. But this does not justify an equal overemphasis on the subjective reality at the expense of the objective reality. Finally, evaluative sociology mayalso offer 92 PHILIPPINE SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW another complimentary perspective to Ileto's framework, I find the e.valuative position necessary because of the times and 'context we are in, and because of the state of historical and sociological scholarship in the Philippines. Many of our history books, for example, still past often glosses over our colonial past, viewed from a eurocentnc point of view. The other extreme, of course, is the use of nationalism and class analysis to· explain everything that has happened (and .is happening) ·in our society. And .even though the evaluative sociology has its limitations, I believe that there is a need to take this perspective. Like Renato Constantino, I am convinced that there must be a mass-nationalist and class-critical perspective in doing historical and sociological work in the Philippines today. I am conscious of the. danger of this position, but "studies based on the evaluative perspective are necessary to combat the falsification of Philippine history and culture that has resulted from colonial . and neo-colonial domination. Thus beyond the routine of genuine scientific enterprise is also an invitation to do what some might call "propaganda." After all, we are not just sociologists nor historians, we are. also Filipinos. a Conclusion Reading the works of Ileto and interpretative sociologists, trying to reflect on Philippine history and society, comparing the different sociological theories brings to mind • several thoughts about. the understanding of social life, A salient one is that beyond social . structures are people groping for a creative response to social events. The relations between structures and people, objective reality and subjective realities, scientific and evaluative theories, order and conflict - all these drive home the realization that the study of society is a complex matter. The sociological passion, in the words of Berger, is more .like a demon that possesses one, that drives one compellingly, again and again, despite its share of dangers to questions that are its own. And so I end this note as I began it, with the words of Peter Berger. . References Berger, Peter 1963 Invitation to Sociology: A Humanist Perspective, New York: Doubleday. _ 1967 The Sacred Canopy: Element of a Sociological Theory of Religion. New York: Doubleday.: BeIger,Peter and Thomas Luckmann 1967 The Social Construction _of Reality. New York: Doubleday. neto, Reynaldo C. 1979 Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840-1910. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, Quezon City. Turner, Jonathan 1978 The Structure of Sociological Theory. lllinois: Dorsey Press "