El Fili Manuscript: The Unpublished Foreword

Not all of the text contained in the original manuscript of the El Filibusterismo was included in the printed book.  Two such texts are the Foreword and the Warning.  These portions of the book were eliminated to save on printing cost.

The Foreword reads:

We have so often been frightened by the phantom of filibusterism that from only a nurse's narration it has become a positive and real being whose name alone (in depriving us of our serenity) makes us commit the greatest myths in order not to meet the feared reality.  Instead of fleeing, we shall look at its face, and with determined, if inexpert, hand we shall raise the veil to uncover before the multitude the mechanism of its skeleton.

If, upon seeing it, our country and its government reflect, we shall consider ourselves happy no matter whether they censure us for the audacity, no matter whether we pay for it like the young student of Sais who wished to penetrate the secret of the priestly imposure.  (On the other hand, if in the face of reality, instead of being soothed, one's fear is increased and the trepidation of another is aggravated, then they will have to be left in the hands of time which educates the living, in the hands of fatality which weaves the destinies of peoples and their governments with the faults and errors that they are committing every day. )

Europe, 1891

The Author