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Rizal's Masterpiece: El Filibusterismo. The message of the novel is clear: the present system of governing the Philippines through corrupt and self-seeking officials, dominated by the friars and being submissive to their interests in one fashion or another, can only lead to disaster for Spain.

SUMMARY OF EL FILI. The protagonist of El Filibusterismo is a jeweler named Simoun. He is the new identity of Crisostomo Ibarra who, in the prequel Noli, escaped from pursuing soldiers. It is revealed that Crisostomo dug up his buried treasure and fled to Cuba, becoming richer and befriending Spanish officials.

"Noli Me Tangere" is translated "Touch Me Not" or "The Social Cancer," while "El Filibusterismo" is translated "The Reign of Greed." Both novels were about politically and historically driven fictional Philippines during the Spanish colonial period inspired by the writer's living conditions, views, beliefs, and ...

Inspired by what the word filibustero connoted in relation to the circumstances obtaining in his time, and his spirits dampened by the tragic execution of the three martyred priests, Rizal aptly titled the second part of the Noli Me Tangere, El Filibusterismo.

The word is derived from the Spanish filibustero (“freebooting”) and originally described piratical 16th-century privateers. It came into English usage to designate any irregular military adventurer, such as the Americans who took part in Latin American insurrections in the 1850s.

On the last part of El Filibusterismo, Simoun decided to poisoned himself and died before the guardia civil caught him.

The word had a broad meaning in the Philippines in the 19th century, when Spaniards considered 'filibusterismo' to mean the idea of the breaking away of the colony from the mother country, and 'filibusteros' were those who aspired for the realization of this idea.

The novel centers on the Noli-El fili duology's main character Crisóstomo Ibarra, now returning for vengeance as "Simoun".