What have we learned from the GomBurZa past?

By Allen Gaborro

In 1872, in what was pre-revolutionary Philippines, an atmosphere of intrepidness, nationalism, and self-awakening descended on Filipinos as three Roman Catholic priests were unjustly put to death by the Spanish colonial authorities. 

The trinity of priests (Mariano Gómes, José Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora), were garroted—after what was widely believed to be a manipulated legal process—for allegedly conspiring to rebel against the colonial government. Their names would live on in Filipino historical lore as an acronym symbolizing virtue, sacrifice, and patriotism: “GomBurZa.”

Some 151 years after that fateful event, director Pepe Diokno wants to show that there is no emotional or psychological daylight between the Filipinos of GomBurZa’s period and Filipinos today. His 2023 Tagalog-Spanish language (with a smattering of Latin) film “GomBurZa” bridges past and present in making readily available the story of the three martyrs to contemporary Filipino audiences.

Filipino historical movies have on occasion fallen hostage to theatricality and overextended dramatization. “GomBurZa” however, a visual body of biographical commemoration, maintains a sober, unrushed ambience of pace, plot, and scene setting. The subdued style and stride of Diokno’s film gives its historical and nationalistic narrative a more solemn momentousness and meaning.

Facing the sclerotic institution of the Catholic Church, as it was dominated during the colonial era by the Spanish friars, the three secular or native priests (respectively and capably portrayed by Cedrick Juan (Burgos), Dante Rivero (Gómes), and Enchong Dee (Zamora) followed the lead of one of their own, Father Pedro Peláez (Piolo Pascual) in standing up for their rights.

At the heart of “GomBurZa” is the native clergy’s preservation of their indigenous entitlements and principles against the insatiable encroachment of the Spanish religious class. As the most prominent figures of this fight, the three clerics must have known that their cause would prefigure the coming of the anti-imperial revolution and the ideal of an independent Philippines.

As far as historical accuracy goes, Diokno made it a point to be as painstakingly meticulous as possible in the film. To give us a conception of the commitment to factual history in “GomBurZa,” Diokno draws inspiration from the example of Apolinario de la Cruz (a.k.a. Hermano Pule), the leader of the Cofradía de San Jose religious brotherhood. De la Cruz was also a victim of the Spanish Catholic Church’s opprobrium in turning away native priests. 

In dealing with the social, political, and religious situation in his movie, Diokno judiciously negotiates the escalating enmity between the GomBurZa priests and their devotees and the intransigent friars and colonial administrators. Diokno does so without losing sight of the intelligence, decency, desire for autonomy, and quiet desperation not only of the foregrounded priests, but of the supporting cast of Filipinos in the movie.

There will be some who would begrudge “GomBurZa” the credit it deserves. These insular spirits would bemoan that they are all too accustomed to the same flag-waving and liberty-or-death emotions that are evoked in the movie. They’ve seen and heard tiresome expressions of those emotions in other projections of Philippine history. As far as this dissonant crowd is concerned, familiarity truly breeds contempt.

These skeptics, these hardcore, shortsighted prophets of the present and the future such as they are, keep Philippine history at arm’s length. For them, the past is nothing but the distant, faded tail end of a linear, inexorably progressive path of human evolution.

But the past never leaves the Filipino consciousness, the grievous past conspicuously so. Nor should it. There’s no buyer’s remorse, no putting our minds at rest in looking back into time and learning from it. As Renato Constantino made clear, the “rich tradition of struggle has become a motive force of Philippine history.” 

Pepe Diokno’s “GomBurZa” should appeal to Filipinos today, many of whom possess a growing impulse to examine their country’s inward and outward journey through the lens of history. Diokno’s film is not intended for Filipinos to forlornly dwell in the past. Gazing back into the past is intended for Filipinos to become all the better for it.