halupi:

On August 30, 1850 Marcelo Hilario del Pilar, best known as “Plaridel,” was born. He was one of the greatest of Philippine Propagandists, a stalwart defender of Philippine native rights, and an integral part of the development of Philippine nationalism in the later 19th century.

Plaridel’s chosen weapon at the time, as with Rizal et al, was the pen. He was a fiery writer and journalist, taking over La Solidaridad, and becoming one of the central leaders of the Propaganda Movement in Europe during the later 1880s. However, he was also a major mover in the Propaganda and information campaigns in the Philippines. When we talk about nationalists Plaridel stands tall.

He was born in Bulacan, the brothers of a priest exiled in the Marianas after 1872. Reform and revolution was in his blood. He eventually graduated from UST with a law degree, and in 1882 was one of the founders of Diariong Tagalog; a prominent and important propaganda newspaper. Even after the failure of the newspaper (because of economic issues caused by natural disasters), he stayed active in spreading nationalist and anti-friar thought. During the mid-1880s, with more liberal and anti friar elements in the Spanish government in the Philippines, del Pilar was quite active in supporting and ‘engineering’ measures to abrogate the power of the clergy in the Philippines. For a period, they were successful.

Sadly, we know Plaridel primarily as a Reformist; ignoring that he was working towards Philippine independence. His hopes for independence were sprinkled throughout his writings, and he rarely hid the contempt in which he held the friar orders and the Spanish government. One of the first pamphlets he published in Europe in 1889 laid the groundwork for that independence:

It is now three centuries since the blood of Legazpi and of Sicatuna, mingled in a cup which both men drained in sign of eternal friendship, ratified their oath to fuse from that day forward into one single ideal the aspirations of Spain and of the Philippines.

But the time which has passed since, without consolidating that fusions, has only strengthened the domination of the monasteries which have converted the Islands into a colony for monastic exploitation.

Happy Birthday del Pilar! One of our great heroes.

(Source: diariodefilipinas)