CALAMBA AGRARIAN PROBLEMS

For the Calamba discussion see chapter 10 of Guerrero’s the First Filipino and part 3, chpter 3 of Austin Coates’ s Rizal, Philippine Nationalist and Martyr (1968)

See also Rizal and the University of Santo Tomas, 167-207

Ownership of the Calamba hacienda passed on to the Dominicans after the Jesuits –who originally owned it- were expelled in 1768. The Dominicans owned practically all the lands around Calamba. The tenants suffered since many years due to the unjustified taxes they had to pay. Even if there was an economic crisis or the harvest was bad, the rent and taxes went up. The tenants suffered under the friars.

Rizal had not anticipated but he soon became the center of the tenant’s struggle against the Dominicans. It started innocently. On 30^th December 1887, when the government, wondering why the revenue paid by the Dominicans Order had remained constant despite the ever-increasing size of cultivated lands, formally asked the Calamba town council to determine whether there had been any increase in the products and the size of the Dominican estate over the past three years.

The friars wanted to withhold the tenants to tell the truth. The Rizal family as well as the other Calamba tenants wanted to tell the truth. The tenants asked Rizal to draft a report for the town council.

Rizal asked his town mates to supply him with all the relevant facts about the estate from the very beginning.

What came out was a horror story of Dominican corruption and financial deceit on a massive scale. The original hacienda owned by the Jesuits consisted of only a small part of land and included only a part of the town, but the Dominicans had claimed a much more extensive area, no less than the whole town and its surrounding fields. The Dominicans were paying the government only the income tax due on the original smaller hacienda.

Rizal wrote down his findings, which were signed by the tenants in January 1888, and he submitted the report to the government.

Rizal advised his family to stop paying the rent. The rest of the Calamba tenants followed suit and with Rizal’s encouragement, petitioned the government to intervene by authorizing and supervising the drawing up of a new contract between the people of Calamba and the Dominican landowners.

The friars were furious because they were attacked on their most sensitive point: money! The report never reached the desk of the governor-general. The Dominicans responded by filing an action for eviction against the Calamba tenants. When the justice of the Peace of Calamba ruled in favor of the tenants. The Dominicans immediately brought the case to the Supreme Court in Manila, which immediately decided in the Dominican’s favor. The tenants and the Rizal family had no recourse but to appeal their case to the Supreme Court in Madrid.

The Dominicans put pressure on Malacañang to eliminate Rizal. Governor-general Terrero advised Rizal to leave the Philippines for his own good.

The liberal governor-general Terrerro was at that time replaced by the conservative general Valeriano Weyler in 1888. He was completely on the side of the Dominicans. One of his first acts was to enforce the court ruling for the eviction of the tenants. The first to be evicted was the Rizal family.

On 6 September 1890, general Weyler began enforcing the will of the Dominicans by sending artillery and military forces to Calamba which started to demolish the house of Rizal’s parents. Rizal’s brother, brothers in law were arrested and exiled to different places of the archipelago. On the first day 60 families were thrown out of their houses and the sugar mills and all other buildings they had erected were destroyed. The Dominicans forbade the rest of the townspeople to give the unfortunates lodging and hospitality. By the end of September 400 tenants had been evicted.