Jose Rizal:The Life and Times of the the First Filipino

Jose Rizal, the Philippines' celebrated national hero was born on June 19, 1861 in Calamba, Laguna. His parents were Francisco and Teodoro Alonzo. An intelligent child, he was taught by his mother basic arithmetic and the Bible at a young age. At the tender age of eight, Rizal wrote the poem "Sa Aking Kabata", which has become one of the most important poems in paying homage to the love of one's own language. He finished his primary education in Binyan, and went on to Manila to pursue further studies at the Ateneo Municipal, a school operated by the Jesuit group of friars.

He enjoyed the arts, being hailed as one of the Philippines' few true Renaissance Men, and delved into petry, mathematics, rhetoric, painting and even sculpture. As a Renaissance Man, he exhibited the vital drive to educate one's self in many disciplines, as evidenced by his voracious consumption of books on a variety of subjects. As Giovanni Boccaccio had said in his treatise on the "Genealogy of the Gentile Gods", to be a true Renaissance Man, one had to be well read in many disciplines, to be able to accumulate a wide vocabulary. It was Rizal's enthusiasm for his personal education that helped his writing of the revolutionary novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo.

In his childhood, Rizal was already aware of the suffering of his fellow Filipinos. As a young one growing up in Calamba, he knew how the Spaniards could inflict such torment to his helpless countrymen. He knew for a fact that there was heavy taxation and land-grabbing going on daily. It was this that inspired Rizal to eventually lobby for reforms in the Philippines. When he was eighteen years old, he won the first prize in a competition with his piece, A la Juventud Filipina. At a separate competition his work El Consejo de los Dioses was judged best among his peers and yet he was not awarded simply for being a Filipino.

For a while he studied at the University of Santo Tomas and at the age of twenty-one left for Spain. In Spain, he studied medicine and started reading many books outside his curriculum. He also managed to study several languages, and turned into a polyglot. At the age of twenty-six he had finished his landmark novel Noli Me Tangere. A complete English translation of the Noli was published in the year 1912, with the title The Social Cancer. It was translated by Charles E. Derbyshire.

According to Benedict Anderson, noted author of Imagined Communities and Spectre of Comparisons, Rizal had the best education then available in the colony, provided exclusively by the religious Orders, notably the Domicans and Jesuits. It was an education that he later satirized mercilessly, but it gave him a command of Latin (and some Hebrew), a solid knowledge of classical antiquity, and an introduction to western philosophy and even to medical science. It is again vertiginous to compare what benighted Spain offered with what the enlightened, advanced imperial powers provided in the same Southeast Asian region: no real universities in French Indochina, the Dutch East Indies or British Malaya and Singapore till after World War II.

Anderson continues: Europe affected him (Rizal) decisively, in two related ways. Most immediately, he came quickly to understand the backwardness of Spain itself, something which his liberal Spanish friends frequently bemoaned. This put him in a position not generally available to colonial Indians and Vietnamese, or, after the Americans arrived in Manila, to his younger countrymen: that of being able to ridicule the metropolis from the same high ground from which, for generations, the metropolis had ridiculed the natives. More profoundly, he encountered what he later described as "el demonio de las comparaciones" a memorable phrase that could be translated as "spectre of comparisons". What he meant by this was a new, restless double-consciousness which

made it impossible ever after to experience Berlin without once thinking of Manila, or Manila without thinking of Berlin. Here indeed is the origin of nationalism, which lives by making comparisons.

A limited number of copies filitered itself through Spain and found itself transported to the Philippines. By virtue of the dynamic and revolutionary content of Noli Me Tangere, it gained popularity with both the middle class and revolutioary peasantry of the Philippines. The book was attacked by the friars in the Philippines and by the Spanish authorities because of the ideals presented in the book. These ideals were of a revolutionary nature; it was in the contention of Rizal as intellectual and cultured reformist to educate, illuminate and enlighten those who have read his book to the basic truths of colonialism and the consequences of an ultimately corrupt and evil government in a formerly free country.

Fr. Jose Rodriguez, a Spanish friar, published the pamphlet Caingat Cayo to warn people of the evils of reading such a book. Rizal answered this pamphlet in 1889 with La Vision de Fr. Rodriguez, a brilliant counter-attack to the distorted views that the aforementioned friar had stated. Rizal had a single-minded devotion to the betterment of the social conditions in his suffering homeland; it was his singular purpose as a reformist and his ideals answered to this calling.

The El Filibusterismo, on the other hand, was Rizal's political novel that anticipated the coming of a Revolution; a feat that was to be expected by the collective political action of the peasantry and middle-class groups to finally tear assunder the proverbial Walls of Jericho and emancipate themselves from the colonial power that was holding them as slaves in their own country. Yet, being a normally peaceful man, Rizal's conception of a revolution in the Philippines was that of a peaceful, unarmed revolution.

When Rizal returned to the Philippines in 1892 he was promptly thrown into prison in Fort Santiago. In July 7, 1892, he was exiled to Dapitan so as to isolate his so-called "destructive genius". For four years he remained in Dapitan helping his needy countrymen, planting fruit trees, teaching and writing to his good friend Ferdinand Blumentritt in Austria. Rizal was then tried on charges of treason and complicity with the revolution. Rizal denied any direct hand in the revolution; a statement that divided the historians on the account of whether Rizal or Bonifacio should be called a "national hero". He was sentenced to die, and was shot by a musketry group on December 30, 1896 in Bagumbayan.

The united force of the Filipino reformers in Spain created an atmosphere of a charged political fever, rallying for social change. In February 15,1889, the first number of copies of La Solidaridad came out.The Sol was the political newspaper published by Filipino reformists devote to the exposition of the true condition of the Philippines and to defend Filipinos against the malicious and slanderous attacks of the hired writers of the friars and the publications of studies about the Philippines and the Filipinos.

Parallel to the introduction of Freemasonry in the Philippines, La Propaganda was created. La Propaganda was a civic society that aimed at obtaining political concessions from the Mother Country. But in time, due to malversation of funds, the group passed out of existence. At this point in time, Rizal decided to form another civic society. On July 3, 1892, at a house in Tondo, Rizal inaugurated La Liga Filipina. The main objectives of the civic society was to unite the whole archipelago into one compact, vigorous and homogenous body, mutual protection in every want and necessity, defense against all violense and injustice, encouragement of instruction, agriculture and commerce, and finally the study and application of reforms.

Contemporarily, the novels of the late Rizal have been viewed by critics with much importance, since it was written at a time of such personal difficulty for the author and in such an atmosphere of political ferment and instability. According to Resil B. Mojares, author of theOrigins and Rise of the Filipino Novel, Rizal wrote in Spanish because it was the language he knew best and because he must have felt at that time that it was the medium through which reform had to be carried out, motivated as he was then by the desire to address Spanish liberals and officialdom. He was not completely happy with his choice of language. In fact, he had written to Viola that if Noli Me Tangere proved a failire, he would thenceforth write his works in French, as in this language he would have a more progressive, wider public.

The writing of a novel was a trial, bringing Rizal to the brink of physical and financial exhaustion. With the aid of Maximo Viola the book was finally printed in berlin and was out in 1887. He faced problems with shipments held up by the customs and censors both in Spain and in the Philippines and Guerrero estimates that of the 2,000 copies printed, possible not more than 1,000 reached Filipino readers in Rizal's lifetime.

E. San Juan, literary critic and author of Towards a People's Literature writes: On the eve of his execution, Rizal wrote in German to the now immortalized Ferdinand Bluemetritt: "When you have received this letter I am already dead. Tomorrow at 7 o'clock I shall have been shot. I am however, innocent of the crime of rebellion. I die with a clear conscience." From the place of the Other, the site of the alien and of hopes, Rizal is addressing himself, the present, Us, the reader positioned to decipher his message. Compared to the speaker, our conscience is cloudy, and we dare not claim equivocal innocence.

Was Rizal a hero, or not? It is for us, the most recent of generations, a subject to internalize, and eventually, resolve. For Rizal, the First Filipino, and us, the Filipinos of today.

Bibliography:

1. San Juan, Epifanio. Toward a People's Literature. University of the Philippines Press. Diliman: 2005

2. Mojares, Resil B. Origins and Rise of the Filipino Novel. University of the Philippines Press. Diliman: 1998

3. Agoncillo, Teodoro A. History of the Filipino People. Garotech Publishing. Quezon City: 2006.

4. Anderson, Bendict. Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia and the World Ateneo de Manila Press Quezon City: 2004