Prettified Villains
Editor's Note: This short article was take from Mike’s inputs to the question of whether the photos of Polavieja and Nozaleda should be included in the Rizal website of Dr. R. Yoder.
I have begun to have doubts about the usefulness of posting a picture of Camilo Polavieja, and would like to please suggest that other members of the discussion group give their opinions about showing his portrait, or if rather only his crimes should be described in detail.
There are published portraits of him. His formal photo in uniform was printed in a book by the Jose Rizal Centennial Commission in 1962. It is a studio portrait, posed and obviously retouched by the photographer in an attempt to prettify his features. He is not the only villain in the official murder of Rizal that we know by name. Perhaps the single man most responsible for the conspiracy to kill Rizal was the Archbishop of Manila named Bernardino Nozaleda, whose portrait is also there in the 1962 book.
Looking at the portraits of these despicable criminals provides us with little or no useful information, since the portraits cannot and do not show their true ugliness, their hypocrisy, their viciousness. Appearances are deceiving. Perhaps it is better if we do not look at them, but rather imagine them in their full ugliness.
One might argue that since the Rizal Centennial Commission once printed photos of Polavieja, Nozaleda etc., it should be fine if you showed them also. On the other hand, we can make a new decision about the relevance of their enhanced likenesses. Maybe showing the portrait of Nozaleda would have more value than that of Polavieja. In several of his portraits I've seen, he looks almost like he could be there in Manila today, as the current Archbishop, except it is now a Filipino instead of a Spaniard. However, it is still the same parasitic religious bureaucracy that served as the mind-control for the Spanish colonial terror, and that not so long ago fought against the teaching of Rizal's novels in the schools, that produced expurgated editions of his writings, censoring his words and ideas, and that today still fights so bitterly against social progress.
