Reynaldo Ileto Pasyon and Revolution

●​ (1)Who or what would shoulder the blame: depressed rural conditions, trigger-happy
police, religious fanaticism, or, as intelligence reports claimed, Communists?
●​ (1-2) Valentin De los Santos’s goals were very basic: true justice, true equality, and true
freedom for the country. But it was his style of portraying and attaining these goals that
made him appear a hero to some and a madman to others.
●​ (2) attainment of freedom- Second Coming of Christ, subscribed to ancient beliefs in the
magical potency of sacred weapons, inscribed objects (anting-anting) and formulaic
prayers.
●​ Lapiang Malaya affair: We should be able to find meaning in it, not resorting to
convenient explanations like “fanaticism,” “nativism,” and “millenarianism,” which only
alienate us further from the kapatid who lived through it.
●​ We modern Filipinos need, first of all, a set of conceptual tools, a grammar, that would
help us understand the world of the kapatid, which is part of our world.
●​ cultural transformation proceeds in an uneven, sporadic manner so that in a given
historical situation we find cultural modes that reflect previous stages of development.
●​ It is necessary that we first understand how the traditional mind operates, particularly in
relation to questions of change.
●​ (3) do we really understand what the Katipunan uprising was all about?
●​ Pre-1872 accounts tend to focus upon the struggle of the native clergy for equal status
with the friars, post-1872 studies usually deal with the activities of the native and mestizo
elite that was to lead the nationalist struggle.
●​ even as the reformist or assimilationist movement faltered and died in the early 1890s,
the upsurge of nationalism was such that a separatist movement—the Katipunan—was
able to take root among the masses.
●​ (4) Agoncillo’s purpose in his book—to rectify the tendency of historians before him to
regard the revolution as the handiwork of upper-class, Hispanized natives
-​ The Katipunan movement was initiated by petty clerks,laborers, and artisans in
Manila, and that it was only later that educated and propertied Filipinos were,
with some reluctance, drawn into the struggle.
-​ The physical involvement of the masses in the revolution is pretty clear, but how
did they actually perceive, in terms of their own experience, the ideas of
nationalism and revolution brought from the West by the ilustrados?
 -​ Agoncillo assumes that to all those who engaged in revolution, the meaning of
independence was the same: separation from Spain and the building of a
sovereign Filipino nation. We can rest assured that this was the revolutionary
elite’s meaning, which could very well be identical with that of revolutionary elites
in Latin America and elsewhere.
-​ But the meaning of the revolution to the masses—the largely rural and
uneducated Filipinos who constituted the revolution’s mass base—remains
problematic for us. We cannot assume that their views and aspirations were
formless, inchoate, and meaningless apart from their articulation in ilustrado
thought.
●​ (5) Meanwhile, we are left wondering about Bonifacio—his passionate commitment, the
vibrant language that inspired thousands to rise, the Katipunan’s “strange” initiation rites,
and the emblems and symbols that often took on a magical significance to the masses.
●​ the problem we face is how to categorize the activities of post-1902 katipunans, religio
political societies and other peasant-based groups that waved the banner of
independence and plagued the new colonial order up to the 1930s.
●​ How then are the “troublemakers” to be viewed? Were Macario Sakay and his katipunan
romantic idealists who failed to adjust to the “realities” of post-1902 colonial politics, just
as Bonifacio had stubbornly failed to adjust to the widening scope of the revolution in
1897? Were the various religious leaders—messiahs, popes, supremos, and kings—who
with their peasant followers formed their own communities, harassed landowners and
confronted the armed might of the constabulary, simply “religious fanatics” or “frustrated
peasants” blindly and irrationally reacting to oppressive conditions? Were nationalist
Filipino leaders justified in helping the colonialists suppress these “disturbances”?
●​ “Blind reaction” theories prevail; intentions and hopes are left unexamined. This leads to
the foregone conclusion that early popular movements were largely failures, and
continued to be so until they turned more “rational” and “secular.”
●​ each movement learns from the experience, particularly the mistakes, of its
predecessors.
●​ “No uprising fails. Each one is a step in the right direction.” These were the most
memorable statements of Salud Algabre, a female organizer in the Sakdal peasant
uprising of 1933,
●​ Though an uprising may be unsuccessful, it paves the way for future victory
●​ (6) over a decade after 1959 would scholars follow upon Sturtevant’s suggestion that,
because of rural economic conditions and the persistence of traditional cultural forms,
perhaps the peasantry viewed the nineteenth-century situation differently from that of
their relatively more sophisticated and urbanized compatriots.
●​ During the tumultuous era of Phil Rev: was the appearance of a large number of popular
movements in Luzon, some led by local “messiahs” and others by “bandit” chiefs, who
embodied rural aspirations such as freedom from taxes, reform of the tenancy system,
and the restoration of village harmony and communalism.
●​ Sturtevant points toward a clarification of the “revolt of the masses” thesis by showing
how variations in Philippine social structure gave rise to a peasant tradition of unrest,
which is called the “Little Tradition,” distinct from the elite-led movements for
independence which belong to the “Great Tradition.”*
●​ The rural masses had something of their own to say and Sturtevant decries the fact that
the Filipino elite either refused to listen to or muffled these voices from below in order to
preserve the image of national unity against colonial rule
●​ (7) Sturtevant accepts the Filipino elite’s definitions of nationalism, independence, and
revolution. By not looking for alternative, valid meanings of these terms within the “Little
Tradition,” he is led to conclude that the peasant-based, religious-oriented challenges to
the republic were antinationalist, irrational, and doomed to fail.
●​ He says, for example, that they were “blind” responses to social breakdown. In contrast,
he ascribes “rational” and “realistic” goals to elite—led movements.
●​ Bonifacio, of lower middle-class origins and with a smattering of education, had been
able to articulate the aspirations of the masses for primitive democracy and freedom
from alien rule.
●​ Previous revolts had been “instinctual reactions to the social order,” spontaneous but
lacking ideology, fragmented because only the economic developments of the nineteenth
century would provide the material basis for a truly national uprising.
●​ It was the Katipunan that forged the centuries-long tradition of unrest with the liberal
ideas that the ilustrados had introduced. But because Bonifacio “had the instincts of the
masses” whose desires were inchoate, his own declarations were “primitive,” inchoate,
and needed ilustrado articulation.
●​ (8) Sturtevant practically ignores the patriotic or nationalist dimension of post revolution
mystical movements, Constantino views these movements as “genuine vehicle for the
expression of the people’s dream of national liberation and economic amelioration.”
●​ the masses during the American colonial period kept alive the spirit of 1896 in their own
primitive and fragmented style.
●​ How did the masses actually perceive their condition; how did they put their feelings and
aspirations into words? How precisely did Bonifacio and the Katipunan effect a
connection between tradition and national revolution? How could the post-1902 mystical
and millennial movements have taken the form they did and still be extremely radical?
●​ As Sturtevant tried to show, the conditions of rural life greatly influenced the masses’
style of action. But the relationship was not deterministic, nor was their culture (i.e., the
“superstructure”) without some autonomy relative to their material life.
●​ In early revolts, as we shall see, certain types of behavior often regarded as fanatical,
irrational, or even “feudal” can be interpreted as peasant attempts to restructure the
world in terms of ideal social forms and modes of behavior.
●​ (9) need to define the Filipino personality, style of politics, and social system.Yet the
masses are hardly encouraged to participate in this effort.
●​ It is the elite, particularly the middle class, that puts its imprint on everything—from
culture to national development and revolution.
●​ The standard interpretation of the revolution against Spain as the working out of ideas
and goals stemming from the ilustrados is symptomatic of the widespread acceptance
among scholars that the educated elite functions to articulate Filipino values and
aspirations.
●​ The model of Philippine society as patron-client oriented, wherein the patrons or elites
are the source not only of money and favors but of “culture” as well, exemplifies the
dominant view in current scholarship.
●​ The masses of poor and uneducated tao are indeed linked, through various forms of
debt relationship and social conditioning to the rural elite, who in turn are indebted to
patrons in the urban centers.
●​ When behavioral scientists today speak of social values like utang na loob (lifelong debt
to another foursome favor bestowed), hiya (shame), SIR (smooth interpersonal relations)
and pakikisama (mutual cooperation), they give the impression that these values make
Philippine society naturally tend toward stasis and equilibrium
●​ Conflicts and strains are smoothed out, defused with a minimum of disruption, instead of
being resolved.
●​ The masses, in particular, are regarded as passive acceptors of change on which the
modern mass media can effectively train its guns. “Politics” for them is but a game they
can allegedly do without or at least simply pay lip service to in lieu of direct participation.
●​ (10) Social mechanisms do tend to preserve the existing socio-economic structure.
●​ Social scientists unable to view society in other than equilibrium terms are bound to
conclude that these movements are aberrations or the handiwork of crazed minds,
alienated individuals, or external agitators.
●​ The present study points out precisely the possibility that folk religious traditions and
such cultural values as utang na loob and hiya, which usually promote passivity and
reconciliation rather than conflict, have latent meanings that can be revolutionary.
●​ This possibility emerges only by regarding popular movements not as aberrations, but
occasions in which hidden or unarticulated features of society reveal themselves to the
contemporary inquirer.
●​ Although most of the sources used in this work—poems, songs, scattered
autobiographies, confessions, prayers and folk sayings—have been published or were
known to previous scholars, they were utilized only insofar as they lent themselves to the
culling of facts or the reconstruction of events.
●​ since a language carries with it the history of its speakers and expresses a unique way
of relating to the world, the exclusive use of, say, ilustrado Spanish documents in writing
about the revolution, is bound to result in an ilustrado bias on issues and events which
offer multiple perspectives.
●​ (11) When errors proliferate in a patterned manner, when rumors spread “like wildfire,”
when sources are biased in a consistent way, we are in fact offered the opportunity to
study the workings of the popular mind.
●​ One of the principal ideas developed in this study is that the masses’ experience of Holy
Week fundamentally shaped the style of peasant brotherhoods and uprisings during the
Spanish and early American colonial periods.
●​ the majority of the lowland Filipinos were converted to Spanish Catholicism.
●​ (12) Catholicism creatively evolved its own brand of folk Christianity from which was
drawn much of the language of anti colonialism in the late 19th century
●​ the reading and dramatization of the story of Jesus Christ, had in fact two quite
contradictory functions in society.
-​ he has argued in his book on the passion play, or sinakulo, they were used by the
Spanish colonizers to inculcate among the Indios Loyalty to Spain and Church;
 moreover, they encouraged resignation to things as they were and instilled
preoccupation with morality and the afterlife rather than with conditions in this
world
-​ was to provide lowland Philippine society with a language for articulating its own
values, ideals, and even hopes of liberation.
-​ Filipinos nevertheless continued to maintain a coherent image of the world and
their place in it through their familiarity with the pasyon, an epic that appears to
be alien in content, but upon closer examination in a historical context, reveals
the vitality of the Filipino mind.
-​ The Casaysayan nang Pasiong Mahal ni Jesucristong Panginoon Natin (Account
of the Sacred Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ): least polished of three church
approved pasyons. I quote exclusively from it because of its popularity among
rural folk, who refer to it as the Pasyon Pilapil.
-​ Pasyon Henesis: it begins with an account of the creation of the world and
concludes with a glimpse of the Last Judgment based on the Apocalypse of St.
John.
●​ (13)The major criticisms of the Pasyon Pilapil are its incoherence, faulty scholarship,
repetitiveness, and clumsy, inaccurate use of language.
●​ The Pasyon Pilapil is a highly imperfect composition, one that probably does not deserve
much attention from a literary or theological standpoint. It stands out mainly as to
paraphrase Marc Bloch—a mirror of the collective consciousness.
●​ (14) Authorship is irrelevant in the case of the Pasyon Pilapil because it bears the stamp
of popular consciousness.
●​ the inclusion of episodes relating to the Creation of the World, the Fall of Man, and the
last Judgment makes the Pasyon Pilapil an image of universal history, the beginning and
end of time, rather than a simple gospel story.
●​ In its narration of Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection, and of the Day ofJudgment
it provides powerful images of transition from one state or era to another, e.g., darkness
to light, despair to hope, misery to salvation, death to life, ignorance to knowledge,
dishonor to purity, and so forth.
●​ During the Spanish and American colonial eras, these images nurtured an undercurrent
of millennial beliefs which, in times of economic and political crisis, enabled the
peasantry to take action under the leadership of individuals or groups promising
deliverance from oppression.
●​ The pasyon text also contains specific themes which, far from encouraging docility and
acceptance of the status quo, actually probe the limits of prevailing social values and
relationships.
●​ Utang na loob: Jesus Christ’s preparation to depart from home and Mary asks, why must
she lose him? (for all the love and comfort she gave her son.
●​ Jesus, despite his attachment to his mother, can only reply that he has a higher mission
to fulfill—to suffer and die in order to save mankind:
●​ There comes a time in a man’s life when he has to heed a call “from above.”
●​ (15) To pave the way for this experience, the pasyon posits the possibility of separation
from one’s family under certain conditions. In a society that regards the family as its
basic unit even in the economic and political spheres, this certainly goes “against the
grain.”
●​ social status based on wealth and educ has no real value, like Jesus
●​ Pasyon contradicts this model by stressing the damage caused by “over-education” and
wealth on the individual loob (inner self), which is where the true worth of a person lies.
●​ It is all right to be maginoo (the Tagalog equivalent of dat'd) as long as the external signs
of power are matched by an equally beautiful loob
●​ social elite in pasyon: maganda sa labas pero bulok sa loob
●​ From Spanish perspective: Pasyon is an effective tool to discourage Indios from
enriching and educating themselves to the point where they might constitute a threat to
colonial rule.
●​ But from the perspective of the mass audience, the identification of the wealthy,
educated pharisees, maginoo and pinunong bayan(local leaders) with Christ’s
tormentors could not fail to have radical implications in actual life.
●​ (16) the pasyon made available a language for venting ill feelings against oppressive
friars, principales, and agents of the state.
●​ The most provocative aspect of the pasyon text is the way it speaks about the
appearance of a “subversive” figure, Jesus Christ, who attracts mainly the lowly,
common people (taong bayan), draws them away from their families and their relations
of subservience to the maginoo, and forms a brotherhood (catipunan) that will proclaim a
new era of mankind.
●​ The pasyon described Jesus as poor, lowly who shelters in other’s roofs and he’s
humble
●​ (17) the soldiers succumb to the bribes. Longinus, however, continues to announce the
resurrection of Christ all over town until he is captured.
●​ Before he is stabbed to death, he confesses that in the past he was blind, but recent
events enlightened (lumiuanag) him, showed him the right path (daang catuiran), so that
he is willing to die as his way of participating in Christ’s passion.
●​ Jesus Christ in the pasyon text appears as a rather harmless leader of humble origins
but he manages to attract a huge following mainly from the “poor and ignorant” class.as
well as his disciples– they were chosen by Him for missions and was given special
powers to carry it out
●​ Timid, modest, gentle, sad and lowly of behavior
●​ (18) Whether the pasyon encouraged subservience or defiance, resignation or hope, will
always be open to argument. The fact is that its meanings were not fixed, but rather
depended on social context.
●​ A problem in dealing with early peasant movements in the Philippines is figuring out the
extent to which they were religious, social, or political.
●​ It is true that many parts of the text, particularly the aral (lessons), exhort the audience to
cleanse their souls in anticipation of a heavenly reward; it is equally true that the pasyon
as a whole is about salvation.
●​ As the Jewish leaders complain to Pilate, Christ’s teachings not only diverge from
Moses’ but also threaten the colonial state and its Jewish supporters
●​ (19) In the pasyon, the gentry perceive Jesus as leader of popular movement against the
roman empire and the traditional jewish leadership
●​ Jesus claimed to be a Messiah (liberator) who will usher a new order
●​ What can be safely concluded is that because of their familiarity with such images(in the
pasyon), the peasant masses were culturally prepared to enact analogous scenarios in
real life in response to economic pressure and the appearance of charismatic leaders.
●​ the pasyon was one of the few literary works available to the rural population, and
therefore could not fail to shape the folk mind.
●​ According to one account, during Holy Week “the old people forbid their children to sing
or read a book other than the [pasyon] awit.”
●​ Another says that “everyone is obliged to read Jesus' book [sic] about his life.
●​ (20) You can hardly find a boy or girl, man or woman, who does not know how to sing
those phrases from Jesus' book. In Some towns, the pasyon was sung for twenty-four
hours over a deceased person’s body.33 In other places, it functioned in courtship
 rituals. During Lent, sometimes a group of young men come in the evening to a young
lady’s house to sing the Pasion below her window.
●​ The indios sang their epics
●​ The widespread use of the pasyon not only during Holy Week but also on
otherimportanttimes of the year insured that even the illiterate tao was familiar with the
general contours of the text.
●​ The common pabasa, or reading session, called for people to assemble in a house,
where a little altar was set up around which two or three individuals sang alternate
stanzas.
●​ Another way in which the pasyon text reached out to a wider audience was through the
sinakulo (in the church or convent)
●​ (21) Through the town streets and the surrounding fields, a penitent carried a heavy
cross, periodically jeered and tortured by others dressed in Jewish or Roman garb.
●​ the basic themes of the pasyon: the huling hapunan (Mass of the Last Supper), the
salubong (meeting) of Christ and the Virgin Mary, the sermons of the parish priest, and
the many processions.
●​ In traditional Tagalog society, at least, Holy Week was that time of the year when the
spiritual and material planes of existence coincided; (people participated in Christ pasion
●​ “every movement is always referred to Christ like cutting woods and eating meat –Lent in
Bulacan 1917
●​ (22) The pasyon, then, was not simply sung, heard, or celebrated by the masses in the
nineteenth century. It was lived, both individually and socially, during Holy Week and
oftentimes beyond it.
●​ For traditional Tagalog society, Holy Week was an annual occasion for its own renewal, a
time for ridding the loob of irnpurities (shed like the blood and sweat of flagellants), for
dying to the old self and being reborn anew, and, through its many social events, for
renewing or restoring ties between members of the community.
●​ Holy Week was also the time when anting-anting were obtained or tested for their
efficacy.
●​ In view of the fact that these amulets or special powers played a significant role in the
thinking and motivation of peasant rebels, bandits, soldiers and even generals of the
revolutionary army, more than a passing mention must be made of them.
●​ to obtain anting anting: was to exhume the body of an unchristened child, or an aborted
fetus, placing this inside a bamboo tube pierced at the bottom. The liquid that slowly
 oozed out was collected in a bottle and saved for Holy Week, during which time it was
sipped by an aspirant until Good Friday, go to the cemetery on midnight of Holy
Wednesday or Thursday and place bowls of food, a glass of wine and two lighted
candles on a tomb.Before the candles burned out, the food and drink would have been
consumed by spirits who would leave a white stone in one of the empty vessels.
●​ Only extraordinarily brave or daring men used this method; these were the ones, it is
said, who usually became rebel or bandit chiefs.
●​ (23) Despite the frequent mention of anting-anting in documents and in interviews of
Katipunan veterans—who are sometimes referred to as “men of anting-anting”—the
subject has not been given the scholarly attention it deserves.
●​ (24) The hermit who deprives himself of earthly comforts paradoxically accumulates
power, while an individual who engages in worldly pleasures loses that steadfastness
and “tense singleness of purpose” which keep one’s power from dissipating.
●​ (25) loob or inner being: We will see how loob is intimately connected with ideas of
leadership and power, nationalism and revolution.
●​ There is a continuity between a leader or group’s success and its inner concentration of
power. The traditional Filipino attachment to anting-anting makes sense.
●​ Anting Anting: They point to a complex system of beliefs and practices that underlie
much of the behavior of peasant rebels and to some extent their leaders.
●​ For the power that is concentrated in an amulet to be absorbed by its wearer, the latter’s
loob must be properly cultivated through ascetic practices, prayer, controlled bodily
movements and other forms of self-discipline.
●​ For an amulet to take effect, the loob of its possessor must have undergone a renewal
and purification.
●​ (26) At first glance, the pasyon seems to be about the salvation of men’s souls. The
poor, meek, and humble of heart will.attain a place in heaven. But in the story itself, the
state of people’s loob has an immediate effect in this world.
●​ On the other hand, those whose loob are pure, serene, and controlled have “special
powers” granted to them by Christ. They can control the elements, cure the sick, speak
in different tongues, interpret signs, and foretell the future. These are precisely some of
the powers one hopes to obtain through anting-anting.
●​ Is it any wonder, then, that anting-anting were obtained, tested or “recharged” during
Holy Week?
 ●​ once we know how the masses perceived reality in the nineteenth century, documentary
sources can be more fruitfully utilized.​
- For example, in February 1897, a news correspondent noted that all those i in
Aguinaldo’s army wore “scapularies and crucifixes around their collars and also a band
of red cotton cloth having another anting-anting secured inside.”
●​ To the “intelligent officials,” says Miranda, an anting-anting was “a simple stimulant to
infuse valor and maintain that serenity and cold-bloodedness which all the armies of the
world need.”
●​ (27)Ricarte’s account: Eusebio Di-Mabunggo distributed among his men pieces of round
paper with cross written in the middle and surrounded by Latin words and they
swallowed it believing that this would keep them from harm, they would absorbed the
power concentrated in the hostlike pieces of paper associated with the death and
resurrection of Christ
●​ No less important was the fact the Eusebio uttered a magical formula to “activate” the
anting-anting. Also, “he told his men that whoever was reached by his gaze (tanaw) at
the moment of battle, and was hurled his mysterious blessing (basbas), would be free
from any danger and hardship in life.”
●​ Obviously, Eusebio Di-Mabunggo had such a great concentration of power in him that it
affected others through his penetrating gaze. This particular episode in Philippine
revolutionary history tells us that the Filipino people, led by charismatic leaders, fought
doggedly against the Spaniards.
●​ extraordinary individuals like possessors of anting-anting and popular leaders were
noted for the radiance about their faces, their ability to cast “compassionate glances” on
their followers.

Joseph Scalice
●​ (1) PR attempted to reconstruct the categories of perception of “the masses” by using
the religious performance of the suffering and death of Christ, the pasyon, as source
material.
●​ engaged with the pasyon as a literary text, ignored the significance of its performance
and treated it in an ahistorical manner.
●​ from the writings and actions of individual members of the elite to the perceptions and
revolutionary participation of the lower classes.
●​ (2) Ben Anderson Ileto’s masterly Pasyon and Revolution is unquestionably the most
profound and searching book on late nineteenth century Philippine history” (Anderson
1998, p. 199n19).
●​ Issues:​
1. no one has comprehensively examined the premises, source material and conclusions
of Ileto’s work according to scalice
2. Ileto’s project of reconstructing the ways in which the lower classes of the Philippines
in the late nineteenth century perceived the world and their role in it failed to achieve its
goal for several reasons.
3. Ileto never clearly defined what class or classes constituted
his amorphous analytical category, “the masses”.
4. He ignored the fact that his source material was accessed through performance.
5. he read his sources as texts, in an elite manner, and reconstructed categories of
perception with no demonstrable relationship to peasant or working class consciousness
6. consciousness and perception cannot explain dramatic historical events such as Phil
Rev of 1896-98
●​ Scalice further argued that to understand the causes of that revolution and to account for
the participation of the lower classes in it, we must give explanatory primacy to objective
historical events and to the changes in the relations of production in the nineteenth
century Philippines. These changes shaped consciousness and transformed the ways in
which people perceived the world.
●​ Scholars have explained the Philippine Revolution as one inspired by the ideas acquired
by the ilustrados. These ideas led to the spread of freemasonry in the Philippines and, in
turn, gave revolutionary inspiration to a lower-middle-class clerk,
●​ In Pasyon and Revolution, Ileto studied the ideas and events of the revolution in a
different manner, by examining the history of Tagalog lower-class movements from 1840
to 1910 (a time punctuated by both millenarian peasant uprisings and revolutions against
Spain and US
●​ Earlier scholars had treated these peasant uprisings as separate, local events, with no
serious connection to the Katipunan or to the Philippine Revolution. Ileto argued that, by
looking at these events as they would have been perceived by the masses,2 we could
see that the seemingly unconnected and irrational uprisings of the peasantry formed a
coherent whole, seamlessly interwoven with the Philippine Revolution.
 ●​ What was needed, according to Ileto, were “alternative, valid meanings” or concepts like
nationalism, independence and revolution — meanings that would have been intelligible
to the masses and corresponded to their understanding of the world
●​ Peasant movements were condemned to appear irrational and backwards.
●​ Pasyon and Revolution aimed to “arrive at the Tagalog masses’ perceptions of events”.
●​ Ileto argued that the pasyon gave the masses an idiom for articulating an understanding
of the world; it did not provide them with an ideology or a coherent picture of society. T
●​ the intersection of the experiences of the masses of their reality and their participation in
the pabasa in pasyon.

Milagros Guerrero
●​ Ileto’s central theme is that "the masses' experience of the Holy Week" (p. 15) – the
recollection of the pasyon and the internalization of the pasyon death of Jesus Christ -
"fundamentally shaped the style of the peasant brotherhoods and uprisings" during the
period covered by the study
●​ the Pasyon which Ileto believes is the key element in the peasant world view, provided
the Christian Filipinos with "a language for articulating its own values, ideals and even
hopes of liberations
●​ The author sees the Pasyon as the ideological source of Tagalog peasant movements
and the Philippine Revolution. He explicates that the various phases in the life of Jesus
Christ have counterparts in the odyssey of the Filipinos to freedom. Christ himself was
the role model of rebel leaders like Apolinario de la Cruz, Andres Bonifacio, and Felipe
Salvador.
●​ The Filipinos, particularly those who were poor and uneducated, perceived Philippine
history through the prism of the Pasyon; past history was viewed” in terms of a Lost
Eden, the recovery of which demanded the people’s participation in the Pasyon of the
Mother country (pg. 317)
●​ the pasyon world view, then, was the connective ingredient which would explain how and
why the Phiippine Revolution unfolded the way it did, Only when the people transformed
their inner selves (their loob) as christ and are rebornn in the brotherhood of man like the
Katipunan can they truly fight for their country’s freedom.