Subject: ilustrado / maginoo 'enlightened'

Culture: Tagalog Filipino

Setting: late Spanish empire, Luzon 19thc

Event Photos

* Espiritu 2005 p1-2

"[I]lustrados expressed themselves through patriotic writing and oratory and achieved notoriety for their outrageous behavior. Moreover, they believed in Spanish conceptions of honor and manly displays, such as fencing and dueling, which earned them the respect of Spanish contemporaries. Despite their attempts at assimilation, Spanish colonial rulers continued to regard the ilustrados as inferiors and blocked their efforts at political, educational, and penal reform in the Philippines. Facing the reality of second-class citizenship at home and abroad, those expatriates began to develop a sense of nationalism, appropriating 'Filipino' as a general term for all Philippine natives."

* Nepangue/Macachor 2007 p79

"[D]uring the latter part of the Spanish colonization, the natives indulged in European fencing. The ilustrados like Antonio Luna learned the sport in a private school in Intramuros, Manila from a certain Martin Cartagena, a retired officer of the Spanish army. In 1895, master fencer named Gregorio Pardini, gave an exhibition of simulated attacks in fencing at the Zorilla Theater in Manila[.]"

* Nepangue/Macachor 2007 p113

"[T]raditionally, eskrima is not a favorite past time [SIC] of the elite and the tenderfoot. In fact the elitists in the latter years of the Spanish colonization preferred European fencing -- the kind of fencing as practiced in Europe. Though it is true that eskrima was greatly influenced by the European fencing, the fact also remains that it underwent a great radical change to be considered not European anymore."

Primary Sources

Secondary Sources

Field Notes