Luis Rodríguez Varela: literatura panfletaria criollista en los albores del liberalismo en Filipinas, 1790-1824

Abstract

Luis Rodríguez Varela is a late eighteenth, early nineteenth century author, whose work constitutes a very interesting example of Philippine criollista pamphlet writings. Represented in the nineteenth and twentieth century by intellectuals or activists as a practically proto-nationalist figure, in this article we will see that his political position was more attuned with a late-Baroque common sense. The ideas and texts that he presented or showed in the context of the Hispanic American independence wars reveal a very singular criollo Filipino identity.