By Valentin Flores Dagani, Jr.

    December 30, 1998 is the 102nd anniversary of the martyrdom of the great Malayan and father of the Filipino nation.

    José Protacio Mercado Rizal - linguist, novelist, poet, physician, scientist - is the hero of the Philippines.  He was born to Teodora Alonso and Francisco Mercado Rizal on June 19, 1861, in Calamba, Laguna.

    Showing early signs of brilliance, he wrote at age 8 a poem, entitled "Sa Aking Mga Kababata," as a means of encouraging other youngsters to love their language.  At the prestigious Ateneo Municipal in Manila (now Ateneo de Manila), he broadened his enormous talents in logic, poetry, mathematics, languages, fine arts, and sculpture.

    The arrest and imprisonment of his own mother on trump charges opened his eyes to the dismal conditions of the country under the Spanish colonial rule.  It spurred him to work and study even harder, and it showed in his literary efforts.  His piece, "A La Juventud Filipina," won first priza in a contest in which he bested the best students the Spaniards could possibly field.  In another contest, however, his allegorical play, "El Consejo de los Dioses" was adjudged the best entry, but was denied the top prize on the grounds that he was not a Spaniard, but a Filipino.

    After his transfer to, but brief stay, at the University of Santo Tomás, he went to Spain to pursue his medical education at La Universidad Central de Madrid.  At the same time, he took and mastered foreign languages including English, French, German, and Latin.  Despite the rigors of his studies, he found time to join the Reform Movement consisting of Graciano López-Jaena, Marcelo H. del Pilar, and Antonio Luna, among others.  In addition, he forcefully wrote in defense of Filipinos in La Solidaridad, the news organ of Filipino exiles based in Spain.

    Not content with his ties with La Solidaridad, he annotated Morga's Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, a feat that proved to the world that the Filipinos already had a flourishing culture and trade long before the coming of the Spaniards.

    Then, at age 26, he wrote what proved to be his greatest literary work, Noli Me Tangere.  Meaning "Touch Me Not," it vividly depicted the widespread atrocities in and despicable maladministration of the Philippines by the Spanish colonial authorities.

    In his own words, Rizal said, "I have described the social condition, the life there, our beliefs, our hopes, our complaints, our sorrows.  I have unmasked the hypocrisy that, under the cloak of religion, has impoverished and brutalized us."

    As embarrassing as it was highly critical of both the Church and the state, the book was banned and the authorities mounted a smear campaign to discredit Rizal by calling him a subversive.  Undaunted, he then wrote a new political novel, El Filibusterismo, as a sequel to Noli Me Tangere.  It was dedicated to the three Filipino martyr priests - namely, Gomez, Burgos, and Zamora, whom the Spaniards executed for alleged involvement in the Cavite rebellion.  Defending the memory of the Fathers Gomez, Burgos, and Zamora, Rizal wrote,

The Church, by refusing to unfrock you, have put in doubt the crime charged against you; the Government by enshrouding your trial in mystery and pardoning your co-accused has implied that some mistake was committed when your fate was decided; and the whole of the Philippines in paying homage to your memory and calling you martyrs totally rejects your guilt.
As long, therefore, as it was not clearly shown that you took part in the uprising in Cavite, I have the right, whether or not you were patriots and whether or not you were seeking justice and liberty, to dedicate my work to you as victims of the evil I am trying to fight.  And while we wait for Spain to clear your names some day, refusing to be a party to your death, let these pages serve as a belated wreath of withered leaves on your forgotten graves.  Whoever attacks your memory without sufficient proof has your blood upon his hands.

    Rizal raised the prospect of a revolution as a solution to the problems of the Philippines.  But being a social reformer and a man of peace, he concluded that pursuing that goal through force of arms was bound to fail.  He argued that civic virtues must first be cultivated before aiming for independence.

    Through Padre Florentino, in the novel El Filibusterismo, Rizal said,

I do not mean to say we should win our freedom with the sword; the sword now counts for very little in the destinies of modern peoples but indeed let us win by deserving it, exalting individual reason and dignity, loving the just, the good, the great, even dying for it.  And when a people reaches these heights, God provides the arms, and the idols and tyrants fall like a house of cards, and freedom shines in the first dawn!

    Upon his return to the Philippines, Rizal was arrested, jailed and then banished to Dapitan, Zamboanga.  Andres Bonifacio, the Katipunan supremo, sent Dr. Pio Valenzuela to Dapitan to arrange for his rescue, but Rizal dismissed the idea outright.  Instead, he offered to serve as a medical doctor in war-torn Cuba.  The authorities, only too glad to get rid of him, accepted his offer and shipped him out.  but on the way to Cuba through Spain, the Philippine Revolution broke out.

    Rizal was arrested in Barcelona, Spain, and then shipped back to the Philippines to face trial.  Tried and convicted of treason and rebellion, he was sentenced to die before a firing squad.  A dingy cell at the infamous Fort Santiago in Manila was his last refuge where, on the eve of his execution, he wrote his classic poem, "Mi Último Adiós."  Reflecting his immense love to his country and people, Rizal's last farewell starts with the following translated lines:

                Farewell, my fatherland, clime of the sun caressed
                Pearl of the Orient seas, our Eden lost
                Gladly now I go to give thee, this faded life's best
                And were it brighter, fresher and more blest
                Still would I give it to thee
                Nor count the cost.

    The following morning, December 30, 1896, Rizal was shot in Bagumbayan Field.  Summing up the short, but remarkably productive life of Dr. Rizal, author Austin Coates commented,

Rizal was a man that stands among those few who are companion to no particular epoch or continent, who belong to the world, and whose lives have universal message.  His field of action lay in the strife of politics and power, but these were not to his inclination.  He shouldered his political burden solely in the cause of duty, a circumstance rendering him one of those figures inhuman affairs, a revolutionary without hatred, and a leader without worldly ambition.  Where his true inclination lay is finely demonstrated in his life by the fact that his works in science, history, and literature, and his profession as an ophthalmic surgeon, share a single, identical aim - to shed illumination and give sight to the blind.

    The lonely field of Bagumbayan,where Rizal courageously fell with his face up towards the azure Philippine sky, is now the hallowed Rizal Park - so named in honor of the greatest Filipino who ever lived.

Valentin Flores Dagani, Jr., LLB, KGOR is the overall coordinator of the Knights of Rizal USA.  He is also the Chairman of the Council for Filipino-American Organizations of Central Florida. This article appeared in the December 1998 edition of Super Pinoy Times.