JUNE 19, 2011
GUINOBATAN
FRIENDS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
I am happy to be here and celebrate with you the 150th birth anniversary of our national hero, the pride of the Malayan race, Dr. Jose Rizal.
I understand that PROF. . . . is the one responsible for bringing me here. Thank you, Sir.
Well, I hope that you have been told that Guinobatan is a beautiful place, lush, green, and fertile. Guinobatan is historical too. For instance, it was here that Fray Bernardino de Melendreras de la Trinidad wrote many of his poems including his version of The Ibalong Epic and the least publicized “Traduccion del romance Bicol de la Erupcion del Mayong, volcan de Albay, que on Indio, testigo ocular, compuso y canto a las pueblos de su circumscripcion muchos años.” This is about the 1814 Mayon eruption. The details are so graphic, I have not read anything like that. I translated it to Bikol. It was also here in Guinobatan where the anthropologist Fedor Jagor stayed when he studied the Bikolnong and the Kabikolan. He stayed with his friend Fray Bernardino de Melendreras.
It was here in Guinobatan where the first normal school for males, of the first class, was established by the Franciscan missionaries even when the revolution was about to flare up. It was the Colegio de San Buenaventura, set up in the area of the St. Benedict’s Academy. Unfortunately, there is even no marker in the place. General Simeon Arboleda Ola was a native of Guinobatan. He was the last Filipino general to surrender to the invading American forces. I feel sad when I hear comments that General Ola did nothing but hide in a cave. That is baseless and derogatory. The Americans were very superior in armaments while Ola had troops who were not only poorly equipped but also starving and sick and dying. As a leader, Ola did the right thing: save his troops from annihilation. And why were the Americans after Ola? Because Ola did everything to disrupt the abaca industry which was a primary reason why the Americans invaded Albay. Ola was a hero in more ways than one.
Let’s go to Dr. Jose Rizal. We can talk about Guinobatan some other day.
Talking about somebody who is very popular is a difficult task. It is easier to find fault with him or her.
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| GAT JOSE RIZAL, MASTER MASON. A photo of the national hero rarely seen by ordinary citizens. (Correas Filipinas) |
It is hard to locate a Filipino who does not know Dr. Jose Rizal, Jose Protacio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda. He was born this day in 1861 in Calamba, Laguna. He was the seventh in a brood of eleven, two boys and nine girls. He traveled throughout Europe, America, and Asia.
What many, perhaps, are not aware of is that the color of his skin was moreno, kayumangging lumala-gatak, just like us. He was not tall, he hardly reached five feet. The size of his head was bigger than the ordinary. Because of his big head, he developed an inferiority complex which he overcame by honing up many of his talents.
We know that Rizal was a genius. He spoke Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Malayan, Portuguese, Russian, Sanskrit, Spanish, and Tagalog. He was not only an ophthalmic surgeon but also an architect, artist, businessman, educator, economist, historian, inventor, musician, mythologist, novelist, psychologist, scientist, cartoonist, ethnologist, scientific farmer, journalist, linguist, nationalist, naturalist, poet, propagandist, sculptor, sociologist, and theologian.
Rizal owes much of his person from his father, Francisco Rizal Mercado, who was a hard working farmer in Biñan, Laguna and his personality from his mother, Teodora Alonso Realonda y Quinto who was a wide reader and who knew many things. Rizal learned the alphabet at age three from his mother. Rizal said that his mother was very loving and very smart. This must be a lesson for our modern mothers who cannot find time for their children. They may be missing another Rizal in the making.
If the surname of his father is Mercado and his middle name is Rizal, how come Jose used Rizal instead of Mercado? The story goes this way: On the eve of Rizal’s departure for Manila to attend school, he saw his mother being dragged to prison. When he reached Manila, he learned that the Spaniards killed Fathers Burgos, Gomez, and Zamora. Father Burgos was a good friend of his elder brother, Paciano. The execution of the three Filipino priests generated suspicion and fear that those who knew or were related or were friends of the priests will be harassed by the Spaniards or they would even be made to suffer the fate of the three priests. Knowing that Paciano was a friend of Father Burgos, Jose came to think about what may happen to him too. Paciano used the surname Mercado. Jose decided to use the middle name of his father, Rizal. Rizal means “greenfield” or “new pasture.” When Filipino surnames were Hispanized, his father chose Mercado, which means “market” thinking it as appropriate for their farming family.
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| SMILING HERO. Another rare photo with Gat Jose Rizal smiling, second from left, standing. (Correas Filipinas) |
Rizal also had weaknesses. He had a liking for beautiful girls and for games of chance. In fact, he became a very popular winner in a game of lotto in Dapitan. He shared a winning of P6,200 out of P18,000 with a Spaniard and with Don Ricardo Carnisero, a captain in Dapitan. Rizal used P4,000 of his winnings to buy a lot, erect a hospital and a school.
What then makes Rizal different from millions of Filipinos, then and now?
One of Rizal’s greatest qualities was his unequivocal love for his native land and for fellow Filipinos. He had been to free, lovely, prosperous, and developed nations yet he always preferred to return to his own rural, oppressed, poverty-stricken native land.
It was his love of country, the native land, and the land of birth that defined his personality.
When he first went to Spain on May 3, 1882, he wrote in his diary that the land of his birth was the seat of all his affection and that he loved it that no matter how beautiful Europe would be, he would still like to go back to the Philippines.
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| ALSO SMILING HERE. Gat Jose Rizal is at left. (Correas Filipinas) |
In his essay El Amor Patrio (Love of Country), Rizal wrote that his deep fondness for his land of birth is a “very natural feeling because there in our country are our first memories of childhood, a merry ode, known only in childhood, from whose traces spring forth the flower of innocence and happiness; because there slumbers a whole past and a future can be hoped.”
In other words, the land of our birth is the hallowed sanctuary of our memories, it is the shrine of our pride as a people, it is the heart of our dreams and aspirations as persons. Lose it and we lose ourselves.
Rizal’s sense of nationalism appears to heighten with distance. He would call his homesickness as “profound loneliness.”
But how can we love a country that wallows in poverty, in misery, in crime, in corruption, in pretensions? How can we identify with a people who have no faith in themselves?
During Rizal’s time, the Filipinos were terribly battered and were reeling under unrelenting abuses and injustices in the hands of both the friars and those in the civil government. The people were not only living in poverty and misery but also denied of the benefits of citizenship. They were slaves in their own land. The Indios were treated like beasts of burden and machines. And they wanted freedom, dignity, self-respect, and respect by others.
Rizal also wanted freedom, dignity, self-respect, and respect by others for the Filipinos. In The Indolence of the Filipinos, Rizal wrote that “Man is not a brute, he is not a machine . . .xxx. . . his object is to seek happiness for himself and his fellowmen by following the road towards progress and perfection.”
Rizal was passionate about political and social reform. He wanted education for his people. He wrote caustic criticisms on the Spanish rule. This led to his most famous work in 1887, the Noli Me Tangere—a novel that exposed the arrogance and despotism of Spain and her clergy. Noli me tangere is Latin for “touch me not,” an allusion to the Gospel of St. John where Jesus says to Mary Magdalene: “Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father.”
Noli Me Tangere exposed matters so delicate that they could not be touched by anybody. Rizal touched them.
In 1891 Rizal followed up the Noli with El Filibusterismo. El Filibusterismo dealt with a more controversial aspect with revolutionary and tragic underlying content. With El Filibusterismo, Rizal was a marked man by the Spanish authorities. He had kindled a flame of freedom to rally a cause. He became implicated in revolutionary movements.
Rizal yearned to go home but it was now very risky for him to come. It meant death to his family and loved ones. He had to work for his cause from Europe, far away from home.
In Madrid, Spain the Filipino expatriates were squabbling to enhance or protect their personal interests. There was a group that wanted Rizal to be the Filipino leader. And another wanted Marcelo H. del Pilar. The friends of del Pilar started to print articles attacking Rizal. Rizal resolved to take himself out of the picture at once. He wrote del Pilar that “I wish to be sure that I may never be regarded as a stumbling block to anybody, even though this involves my own fall.” It became a fixed principle of Rizal to resolve the clash of conflicting ambitions by sacrificing himself.
Consequently, he lost faith in the power of any of the Filipino in Spain to do effective service for the Philippines. He wrote that “ . . .If it had not been for the fact that I did not wish to shorten the lives of my parents, I would have returned to the Philippines. . . .There is where we ought to aid one another, there is where we ought to suffer together and possibly triumph.”
Rizal also learned that his name was being used by Filipinos in Madrid to raise money which they wasted and misappropriated. They also kicked Graciano Lopez Jaena out of the editorship of La Solidaridad. Jaena was left in poverty. Jaena wrote Rizal urging him to help bring about the “downfall of these little patriots who exploit patriotism for their own profit. . . . We should swear to prevent, by every means, the triumph of these false apostles of the salvation of the Philippines.
In agony, Rizal left Europe and sailed to Hong Kong carrying with him 800 copies of his new novel, El Filibusterismo. Rizal seemed to harbor boundless love for fellow Filipinos, wicked or otherwise. He did not lift a finger against his countrymen in Madrid but he could not rest so long as he was entangled with any affair which was in the slightest degree questionable. He would rather go away, far from them.
From Hong Kong he kept sending copies of El Filibusterismo to the Philippines through ship captains and Chinese traders. But Governor General Despujol hated the book. He ordered all those in possession of a copy to burn them. El Filibusterismo became a rare copy soon after it was published.
In Hong Kong, Rizal learned that his brother and sisters and their families were being harassed by the Spanish authorities. Many of his townmates were being exiled to Jolo. His heart bled.
When his fight for reforms seemed lost, Rizal thought of establishing a Filipino colony in Borneo. He would take his relatives there and the three hundred families dispossessed in Calamba. Rizal took a steamer from Hong Kong to Borneo. The British governor of that island conceded the Filipinos 100,000 acres of land, a beautiful harbor, and a good government for 999 years, free of all charges. From there he sent a postcard to Graciano Lopez Jaena in Barcelona, Spain. Jaena wrote Rizal congratulating him for the idea of founding a country of Filipinos. He told Rizal that it could be a base from which the “redemption of our Archipelago” could be done. He said, “ . . . have a piece of land ready for me there, where I can plant sugar cane.”
Other friends of Rizal in Europe were equally excited and could hardly wait to join the expedition.
But Rizal’s brother-in-law, Manuel Hidalgo, did not like the Borneo idea. He wrote Rizal that, “This idea about Borneo is no good. Can’t we stay in the Philippines, in this lovely country of ours? And besides, what will people say? Why have we made all these sacrifices? Why should we go to a foreign land until we have first exhausted all of our efforts for the welfare of the country which nurtured us from our cradles? Tell me that!”
Was Rizal’s brother-in-law right after all?
Perhaps, Rizal had to accept death to make the Philippines safe for his relatives rather than take them to another country.
At this juncture, couldn’t we glean some parallelism between Jose Rizal and Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr.?
Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. wanted to go back to the Philippines from exile in America even under the certitude of death in the hands of the Marcoses because he thought his death could liberate the country from the stranglehold of the Marcos dictatorship. Jose Rizal thought of going home under pain of death because his death could liberate his loved ones from the arbitrary, capricious, vengeful abuses and injustice of the Spanish authorities.
Would Rizal take up arms? Would he join Andres Bonifacio and the Katipunan which was getting stronger every day?
At this period of his life, Rizal was getting convinced that no justice can be expected. It was then that he received a letter from his friend Fernando Blumentritt. Blumentritt’s letter read:
"I urge you not to become involved in revolutionary agitations. He who enters a revolution ought to be able to have at least the probability of success, if he does not wish to charge his conscience with the shedding of useless blood. Always it has proven true that when a country rose against another which dominated her, a colony against the mother country, the revolution has failed to triumph by its own strength. The American Union became free because France, Spain, and Holland joined her. The Spanish Republics [led by Simón Bolivar and others all Latin American Republics, save Cuba and Puerto Rico had declared their independence from Spain by 1825] achieved their liberty because there was a civil war in the home country [Napoleon's invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in 1808] and because North America distributed arms and money to them. The Greeks attained their freedom [from the Ottoman Empire] because the English, French, and Russians aided them. . . If today an insurrection is undertaken in the Philippines, it will end in tragedy, because of your situation in the Islands; standing alone and without a navy there is no probability of your success. Besides the insurgents do not have ammunition for more than five months. I may add that there are too many among the Filipinos who believe in the Friars. A revolution will only give glory to the dead and increase the oppression of the tyrants."
Rizal agreed with Blumentritt that insurrection promised only suicide to the Filipinos.
At this juncture, we can say that Rizal possessed yet another virtue: that of being able to intently listen. He knew how to listen to the pulse of the land, he listened to the people around him, and he listened with the ears of his heart and better judgment.
Over a hundred years after Rizal’s death, it seems that we Filipinos are still pretty much in the same spot. Nothing dramatic has changed. What we are experiencing now are melodramatic, show biz events. We are still a colony under a presumably democratic government that is steeped in doublespeak; under colonizers who claim to be Filipinos but who in reality remain to be reincarnations of the oppressors in the past. We remain to be a people still wallowing in poverty, in misery, in injustice, in abuses, in shame. We remain yearning for dignity, self-respect, prosperity, and pride.
But could it be that we are leaving everything to persons like Rizal and freeing our individual selves of any responsibility? Had Rizal failed to make it clear that each one of us also have responsibilities?
Or, could it be that the ideals of Rizal are not being taught the way it should be? In 1956 the late Cardinal Rufino J. Santos, D.D., Archbishop of Manila, issued a statement opposing the reading by the youth of the novels by Rizal free of any censorship. He wanted a watered down version of Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo to be used in the schools. The Cardinal wrote: “We cannot permit the eternal salvation of immortal souls, souls for which We are answerable before the throne of Divine Justice, to be compromised for the sake of any human good, no matter how great it may appear.”
And today our bishops think of excommunicating even the president of the republic for thinking about how poverty can be solved even by taking radical measures. Is that saving a soul? But the bishops would not lift even their pinkish little fingers to tell a president to put an end to corruption and crime because it is not the way a Catholic nation should be governed.
Did Rizal die in vain? Well, we are celebrating his birth anniversary. We can talk about his death in December.
Mabalos saindo gabos.
Raffi Banzuela
Nota Bene:
References used are in my files (hard copy).
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