Arthur Danto philosophy of history monograph (Gomburza)

Gomburza

Recently in my history class, I learned about the rise of nationalism in the Philippines. The professor taught us that the rise of Philippine nationalism started from the Gomburza incident.

During the time period of Spanish colonization of the Philippines, Indios (nowadays Filipinos) didn’t have much freedom of occupation. Because for example when Spanish needed an architect, they will look for Spanish architect no matter how educated and good the Indio was.

In this kind of fragile time period, the only occupation that could gain respect by both Spanish and Indios was to become a priest. When a person becomes a priest, then normally people think of them as a sacred being showing respect to them. I can’t say that all the priests didn’t receive the call of God to become a priest because if I say that all the priests wanted the respect of both Spanish and the Indios, then I would be over generalizing.

Going back to the fragile situation between Spanish and Indios, the Gomburza incident occurred. Gomburza is actually an acronym denoting the surnames of the indio priests, Mariano Gómez, José Apolonio Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora. These three priests were executed by Spanish authority with the charges of subversion arising from the 1872 Cavite Mutiny.

The execution took place inside the Catholic temple and Indios were seeing these priests being brutally executed by Spanish colonizers. This incident was enough for the Philippine nationalism to rise against the cruel and brutal authority of Spanish colonizers.

Through this Gomburza incident, many national heroes in the Philippines like Joes Rizal who later on was on the center spot of Propaganda Movement that failed to convince the King of Spain to grant Indios the same rights of being Spanish citizens.

Even though this incident didn’t bring the end to the Spanish colonization, I believe that it is alright to say that this incident was enough to agitate the Indios giving birth to the Philippine nationalism.


Jennifer R.C. (1998). GOMBURZA.
Reluctant martyrs started it all. Retrieved October 9, 2008,
From http://www.msc.edu.ph/centennial/gomburza.html