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3. Legends
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
Tandang Selo’s son, Tales, has found some economic success, having cleared an unoccupied plot of land and established his own farm. Soon tragedy strikes, however. First, Tales’s daughter dies of disease, and then the local church informs him that he is squatting on their land. The priests take pity on Tales, however, and allow him to stay for a nominal rent. On his father’s advice, Tales doesn’t contest the church’s claim in court and pays their rent, but as his farms grows, the church continually increases the rent. Tales’s other daughter, Julí, is in love with Basilio and dreams of being educated like him. Tales is made Cabesang, a title which costs him more time and money than it benefits him. These additional costs prevent Tales from sending Julí to Manila. When the priests try to increase the rent again, Tales calls their bluff, prompting them to seize his land.
Cabesang Tales, an upwardly mobile peasant farmer, falls prey to one of the most basic forms of colonial exploitation: the seizure of land. While one could argue that no Spanish claims to Filipino land are legitimate as they have colonized the country by force, even by their own laws the priests do not have the title to Tales’s land—no one does, the land having been unowned and unoccupied. The priests take advantage of Tales’s lack of legal expertise and unwillingness to confront them directly, at least at first. Seeing an opportunity to increase their cut as his farm becomes more successful, however, the priests demand ever-higher rents, irrespective of whether Tales can afford these increases.
Themes
Cabesang Tales rebels against the priests, refusing to pay rent and promising to defend his land by violence if necessary until they can show him documentation proving their ownership. The priests, who do not legally own the land either, take Tales to court. As predicted, the lawsuit consumes Tales’s time and savings. When he isn’t in court, he patrols his land, armed with a gun. The court, while sympathetic to Tales, sides with the priests for fear of losing their own positions. Tales’s son Tanó is drafted and sent to the Carolinas, as he has no money left for a substitute. The priests arrange to have guns confiscated, so Tales, still undeterred, defends his land with a club.
Even though legally Tales is in the right, the priests have the benefit of the legal system’s uneven structure, which places the financial burden of a court case on the poorer and more disenfranchised party. And so, the priests have the money and time to go to court, while Tales must pay out of pocket and sacrifice time he might otherwise spend working or with his family. It is unclear if the priests use their influence to have Tanó drafted, but the novel suggests that it is at least possible. The system of substitutes, in which a draftee can pay someone else to take their place, is yet another deeply unequal aspect of the law. The corruptibility of the legal system is further proven by the priests’ cynical manipulation of the law to disarm Tales.
Themes
Tales, now without a gun, is abducted by bandits, who demand a 500-peso ransom from his family. Julí sells her jewelry but still can’t afford the ransom. In desperation, she sells herself into the service of a rich widow. Tandang Selo is aggrieved by this news. Julí is convinced that her marriage to Basilio has been ruined too and prays for a miracle.
The law not only fails to give Tales justice, it also then fails to protect him from criminals. Indeed, it is only because the priests had Tales’s gun confiscated that he was kidnapped in the first place. Julí’s enormous loan offers yet another example of the gross inequality of Spanish rule, as the poor become more and more impoverished while elites get away with scandalous crimes.
Themes
