A Toast Disguised as a Harangue

Rizals tribute to Luna and Hidalgo

by Carlos A. Arnaldo
Discurso en el Banquete dado en Honor de los Pintores, sometimes
referred to as el brindis or the toast, was Rizals first public speech in
Europe and was actually an impromptu oration urged by many of his
friends, as the assigned toast master, Mximo Paterno did not appear.
Educated by the Jesuits to think on his feet and keep at the ready a store
of intellectual and cultural finds, Pepe the 23 year old student was an
excellent extemporaneous speaker. He shows in this lengthy toast, several
traits inspired by the Latin orator Cicero.
Like Cicero, Rizal first sizes up his audience. On this occasion, the
awarding of the first and second prizes of an international art competition,
the gold and the silver trophies, among the sixty or so guests were several
Spanish students, professors and professionals, some masons and a
number of indio students, artists and writers of La Solidaridad. The
presence of several Spanish celebrities, some eminent persons, was not at
all lost on Rizal who assumed his speaking role with great gusto. Few
among the Spaniards at the dinner expected an eloquent discourse of very
highly nuanced Spanish, with Rizals typical playing on words and
taunting his audience.
He opens by addressing the peninsulares, I know you are listening
attentively, for if you are here at all, you have come to add your
enthusiasm to ours, to share the vivacity of our youth and the depths of
your understanding. He seeks to win over the Spaniards and attune them
more closely to his deeper messages. He does this by soothing their
anxiety, by praising their wisdom and brilliance, then draws them to
accept his proposal. You can view the entire horizon, you sound the
depths and extend your hand to whomsoever, like myself, wishes to unite
with you in a single thought, in a sole aspiration: to recognize and honor
personal genius, and to honor the fatherland of that genius!
Rizal thus raises the issue from the question of racial origin to personal
genius in general. Then to identify that genius, Rizal again universalizes,
we honor the fatherland of that genius. But Rizals intention is clear, the
fatherland is not Spain. It is the Philippines!

Rizal liked especially Ciceros periodic sentences, repeating key words

but transforming their meaning each time. Rizal often used the word
pueblo to denote peoples or a people. But he also uses the same word to
mean nation or race. Unir dos pueblos, unite two peoples, two nations!
But Philippines was not a nation then, only a colonial territory; uniting
in eternal embrace our two peoples separated in vain by seas and space,
our two peoples in which the seeds of disunion sown blindly by men and
despots [friars] do not take root. There is a progress of the word peoples
eventually to mean two nations.
Here too, Rizal starts to test the hostile waters with his first harangue
about the despotic friars, still loved and respected by official Spain as
their colonial administrators.
When he describes both Lunas and Hidalgos paintings as reflecting the
brute power of nature, he further draws blood with a direct attack on the
social ills of the islands: Hidalgo and Luna both express the spirit of our
social, moral and political life; humanity subjected to oppression,
humanity unredeemed; reason and aspiration in open battle against
prejudice, fanaticism and injustice. He further calls the friars myopic
pygmies, ignorant of the future, sickly nurses, corrupted and corrupting;
sowing seeds of discord, to reap later the harvest, a deadly nightmare for
future generations.
The two top winners of the competition were not Spanish, and hardly
European. They were both indios, indigenous natives of that colony.
Although Europe at the end of the 19th century was experiencing a new
enlightenment from the upcoming French thinkers and philosophers, such
as Jean Jacques Rousseau and Victor Hugo, extolling human rights, selfdetermination, the freedom of nations from the tyranny of kingly
oppressors, Spain too was having its own socialist movement though
there remained some long surviving doubts and queries about the real
potential of the indigenous, colonized peoples. The two top prizes, a gold
and a silver trophy were given to two non Spaniards, two indios, who, in
fact showed that they could create and paint as excellently if not better
than their European peers. Could they be considered peers?
Rizal then calms the Spanish anxiety by proclaiming the two artists as
sons of both Spain and the Philippines. Juan Luna and Hidalgo belong to
you as much as to us.

As he toasted the two artists of Spain and Philippines, Rizal harangued

the Spanish authorities on their inaction to grant equality to the
Philippines,
And so I raise my glass in toast to our artists Luna and Hidalgo, genuine
and pure glorious sons of our two peoples.