Love, Passion and Patriotism ─ Sexuality and the Philippine Propaganda Movement, 1882-1892

Love, Passion and Patriotism is an intimate account of the lives and experiences of a renowned group of young Filipino patriots whose propaganda campaign was a catalyst for the country's revolt against Spain. Jose Rizal, Marcelo H. del Pilar, Graciano Lopez Jaena, and the brothers Juan and Antonio Luna were talented writers, artists and scientists who resided in Europe during the 1880s and 1890s. As expatriates, they lived outside the social constraints of their own society and were eager to explore all that Europe had to offer. Provoked by racism and allegations of effeminacy and childishness, they displayed their manliness and urbanity through fashionable European dress, careful grooming and deportment, and demonstrated their courage and virility through fencing, pistol-shooting and dueling.

Their studies exposed them to scientific discourses on the body and novel categorizations of pathology and disease, ideas they used to challenge the religious obscurantism and folk superstition they saw in their country. However, their experiences also radically shaped their ideas of sex and the sexual nature of Filipino women. Raquel A. G. Reyes explores the paintings, photographs, political writings, novels and letters of the propagandistas to investigate the moral contradictions inherent in their passionate patriotism, and their struggle to come to terms with the relative sexual freedom of European women, which they found both alluring and sordid.

About the Author:
Raquel A.G. Reyes is a British Academy post-doctoral research fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies, the University of London

Raquel A. G. Reyes is a British Academy post-doctoral research fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies, the University of London.