Biography
Marcelo H. del Pilar was born on August 30, 1850. His parents were Julián H. del Pilar and Blasa Gatmaitán. To obey the 1849 decree of governor general Narciso Clavería to use Spanish surnames, he adapted the surname of his grandmother, Del Pilar.
When he was very young he played the piano, violin, and flute. He studied first in the college owned by Hermenigildo Flores, then at the Colegio de San José, from where he transferred to the Universidad de Santo Tomás. He finished law in 1880.
On August 1, 1882, he co-founded the Diariong Tagalog, the first bilingual newspaper. He published nationalist and reformist articles, and edited the Tagalog section. He organized anti-friar demonstrations, culminating in a petition signed by 800 people for the expulsion of friars in the Philippines and exile of the Archbishop.
Due to these activities, he was hounded by friars and Spanish officials. He secretly left the Philippines for Spain on October 28, 1888.
In Spain, Del Pilar, with José Rizal and Graciano López Jaena, became known as the leading lights of the reform movement. In Madrid, he edited La Solidaridad. Under his editorship, the aims of the newspaper were expanded to include removal of the friars and the secularization of the parishes; active Filipino participation in the affairs of the government; freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly; wider social and political freedoms; equality before the law; assimilation; and representation in the Spanish Parliament.
Del Pilar's struggle increased when the money to support the paper were ignored and there were no sign of immediate response from the Spanish colonial government. He rejected the assimilationist stand and began planning an armed revolt. His ideas and values were soon inspired by Andrés Bonifacio, who would form the Katipunan, a secret revolutionary organization.
Del Pilar died of tuberculosis on July 4, 1896, barely a month before the outburst of the Philippine Revolution.
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