Colonial Image and the Philippine National Character

Rizal wrote La Indolencia de los Filipinos, with the primary focus of explaining the alleged laziness of the Filipinos during the Spanish occupation. He confirmed that indolence exists within the natives but defended the Filipinos by saying that Filipinos are not indolent by nature as seen in their engagement in economic activities such as trade, craftsmanship and agriculture before the Spanish colonizers came. Rizal’s essay has served as a window for scholars to understand and explain how the Philippines’ national hero thinks. Through the arguments and ideas he presented in La Indolencia, intellectuals like Syhed Hussein Alatas and Emmanuel de Dios were able to understand and share their two cents on how Rizal thinks and what were the stories or events underlying such ideas.

With varying motives and perspectives, the interpretation of Rizal’s arguments differs relative to the profession and interest of the authors. Scholars disagree due to their distinct motivation and ideological perspective. Motivation and perspective condition a scholar’s research and filters the information he considers for his study. (Alatas, 1977) In deconstructing Rizal’s essay and trying to understand the origin of indolence we examine the analysis of Alatas and de Dios. Both having a definite structure to follow ideally, were not able to conclude their study along the same framework. As they build up their discussions both scholars deviate from their initial framework and end up concluding their arguments under a different line of thinking but still within their respective fields. This paper is limited to the discussions presented by both authors as its primary source. First, we present a brief discussion of the issue of indolence. This is followed...

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