LIGA FILIPINA.  Reformist society founded by Jose Rizal.  Without wanting an open break with Spain, Jose Rizal, on his return from Europe, founded in 1892 La Liga Filipina as a forum for Filipinos to express their aspirations for reform and freedom from the oppressive Spanish colonial administration.  Rizal believed that there was still a peaceful ay to stop the grave injustices committed by the Spanish government.  This effort was considered as a last resort of the propaganda movement carried on earlier by Graciano Lopez Jaena and Marcelo H. Del Pilar in Spain.  It served to warn the Spaniards about the violent consequences that might follow if advocacy of reform was ignored or punished.  The Spanish authorities chose the latter course and branded the newly-formed society subversive and its activity seditious.  Rizal was arrested and exiled to Dapitan.  La Liga Filipina was disbanded and its officers were arrested and imprisoned.  Rizal’s deportation led Andres Bonifacio to found the Katipunan, a revolutionary society, as the only alternative to
Spain’s refusal to negotiate with the Filipinos.

_______________

Taken from Artemio R. Guillermo and May Kyi Win.  Historical Dictionary of the Philippines.  Asian / Oceanian Historical Dictionaries, No. 24.  (Lanham, Maryland and London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.  1997), pp. 139-140.