Propaganda Movement

The reform campaign of roughly 1880 to 1895, run largely from Spain, with the newspaper La Solidaridad as its principal organ, published by Graciano López Jaena with Marcelo H. del Pilar and Mariano Ponce central to it.

Its demands are the reason it belongs in an argument about corruption rather than only in a history of ideas: restore Philippine representation in the Spanish Cortes, secularise the clergy, establish legal equality among peninsulares, insulares, mestizos and indios, abolish the polo y servicios and the bandala, guarantee civil freedoms, and open government service equally.

Every item names a mechanism and proposes to change it. This is a budget, not a complaint. Spain refused it, at length, for years, and the Katipunan was founded out of that refusal.

Source: Compiled from the standard account at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_Movement and carried in this course’s history research map as evidence for the strengths thread. The primary material is free and public domain: Rizal’s essays and novels are on Project Gutenberg, and La Solidaridad itself is out of copyright.

First used in: 1.3 · What Filipinos built the moment they could