Jose Rizal, Mariano Ponce, the Luna brothers, Graciano Lopez Jaena, and Marcelo H. del Pilar were minorities who not only survived but excelled in a foreign land by means of their talents, strength of character, and the power of their intellect.
Rizal was a man of many gifts, a poet, novelist, social reformist and, in the end, a martyr. Ponce was a skilled physician. Antonuo Luna was a a pharmacst-turned-revolutionary general. His brother Juan was a fine artist whose masterpiece won the gold medal at the National Exposition of Fine Arts in Madrid. Lopez Jaena was a propagandist who was called "The Prince of Filipino Orators" and Del Pilar was an edtor whose nom de plume--"Plaridel"--Phiippine journalists now proudly identfy with.
They called themselves Los Indios Bravos, a pejorative--meaning "wild Indians"--that they defiantly transformed into an expression of ethnic pride, a way of distinguising theselves fro the Spaniards from the islands who, ironically, were Filipinos.
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