Previous
30. Julí
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in El Filibusterismo, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Colonialism and Identity
Violence vs. Nonviolence
Education and Freedom
Hypocrisy and Colonial Oppression
Summary
Analysis
The students are freed one by one through the influence of their friends and relatives, leaving Basilio imprisoned alone. The captain-general resolves to keep him imprisoned to maintain the appearance of order, prompting protests from his chief of staff. The chief of staff points out Basilio’s excellent reputation and proven lack of connection to the broadsides, but his arguments only convince the increasingly capricious captain-general to keep Basilio as his prisoner. The chief of staff, increasingly angry, tells the captain-general that his conduct dishonors Spain itself, and that it is leaders like him who will cause Spain to lose control of the Philippines by ruling it in such a cruel and arbitrary manner. He declares his refusal to participate in the captain-general’s dictatorship any longer, and the captain-general curtly orders him to take the next ship back to Spain.
Because the alleged conspiracy was a fraud from the very beginning, and because the colonial justice system in the Philippines is arbitrary and deeply corrupt, the students are freed not on the basis of their innocence but through their social and political connections. The chief of staff, accustomed the rational, liberal justice system now implemented in Spain, attempts to advocate for the same impartial judgement in this case. He runs up against not only the captain-general, however, but the entire colonial state—the captain-general is in fact entirely correct when he defends his behavior as typical in the colonies. In resigning, the chief of staff only partially grasps the situation. He understands that this injustice cannot continue and will lead to Filipino independence one way or another, but he fails to see that there is no just way that the Philippines could remain under Spanish rule.
Themes
