FOR LOVE OF COUNTRY

by Ma. Cielito Reyno

Jose Rizal is said to have first expressed his sense of nation, and of the Philippines as a nation
separate from Spain, as a young student in Manila. Proof of this, it is said, can be found in two of his
writings. In his poem “To the Philippine Youth”, which he wrote in 1879, when he was 18 years old (and
which won a prize from the literary group), Rizal speaks of the Filipino youth as the “Fair hope of my
Motherland”, and of the “Indian land” whose “son” is offered “a shining crown”, by the “Spaniard… with
wise and merciful hand”. Still in this poem, Rizal considered Spain as a loving and concerned mother to
her daughter Filipinas.

In his memoirs as a student, later published as Reminiscences, he spoke of the time spent in his
sophomore year at the Ateneo as being essentially the same as his first year, except that this year, he felt
within himself the stirrings of “patriotic sentiments” and of an “exquisite sensibility”1. He might have
been only referring to the sense that the Philippines, was a colony of Spain, and as such, the Philippines
was a part of Spain. If this were the case, his patriotism was therefore directed toward Spain for being
the Philippines’ mother country. Seen in another light, these words may have evidenced Rizal’s moment
of epiphany, his own portent of a future time when he would awake to the tragedies that were the lot of
his fellow indios, the rightful heirs of the Filipinas their motherland.

Some cite Rizal’s verse-play “Beside the Pasig” (written in 1880, when was 19), as his allegory of the
Filipinos’ bondage under Spain2; however, the play’s protagonists are a young boy named Leonido, who
defends the Christians, and Satan, who speaks against Spain for bringing Christianity to the Philippines.

As fate had it, Rizal ultimately awoke to the real state of the Philippines under the hands, not of a loving
Mother Spain, but of an exploitative despot represented by the colonial government in Manila and the
friars who held great influence over the government. His awakening may have come by way of his own
experiences at the university, his family’s experience at the hands of the religious group that owned their
farmland; and perhaps, from the stories about the reformist movement and the sacrifice of the three
priests, collectively known as Gomburza, of ten years before. This last most likely were from his older
brother Paciano, who had been close to Fr. Jose Burgos, and had been an outspoken critic of abuses
during his years in college at the Colegio de San Jose.
Rizal saw the many injustices suffered by his fellow Filipinos: they depended on the religious
corporations or on big landowners, for land to till, or for their living; people were afraid of airing their
grievances or of talking or protesting against the friars or the government, in short, there was no real
freedom of the press or speech. Most Filipinos lacked the privilege of education, and its resultant
benefits, or if they did have education, this was the obscurantist kind generally propagated by the
colonialist policy, which not only kept Filipinos in the dark about their rights, but worse, had molded
them into an abject, submissive people ignorant or worse, ashamed of their own proud heritage, a
heritage that existed even before the arrival of the Spaniards. Finally, Rizal realized that the Philippines
had not been consistently represented in the Spanish parliament. For Rizal, this was the root of the
absence of justice in the country, or of their being deprived of basic rights.

His essay “Love of Country” which he wrote in June 1882 (but appeared in the newspaper Diariong
Tagalog Manila in August)3, when he was already in Spain, and he was 21 years old. In it he talks of “love
of country” which “is never effaced once it has penetrated the heart, because it carries with it a divine
stamp..;” that it is “the most powerful force behind the most sublime actions” and for that reason, love
of country “of all loves…is the greatest, the most heroic and the most disinterested”.4 He speaks of the
Motherland for whom “some have sacrificed their youth, their pleasures…others their blood; all have
died bequeathing to their Motherland…Liberty and glory.”5

It can be inferred from his words that at this point Rizal’s sense of nation was now fully-formed and
complete, and perhaps not by happenstance, its expression coincides with his departure from his
country. While there is still no outright and open criticism of the friars, or the colonial government, or
even of Spain for he may have only been being careful, Rizal by this time had become a nationalist and
had gone abroad for the cause of his countrymen. This is confirmed by a line from a letter written to him
by his friend Vicente Gella, in the same month he wrote “Love of Country”, (June 1882):

“If the absence of a son from the bosom of his esteemed family is sad, no less will be that of a friend
who, being very dear to all of us …his friends and comrades, now is away from us seeking the welfare
that we all desire. Had it not been for that, the separation would have been more painful for the
distance that separates us. May God help you for the good that you do to your fellow countrymen.”

Another letter written by his friend Jose M. Cecilio, dated August 28, 1882, also corroborates this:
“I’m very glad that you will go to Madrid where you can do many things in favor of this country jointly
with the other Filipinos..so long as they will not give us freedom of the press, abuses, arbitrariness, and
injustices will prevail more than in other parts of the world.”

Ultimately, it does not matter when or even how Rizal’s politicization came, or why he went abroad: to
complete his medical studies there; or, to expand his opportunities for establishing himself as a writer7;
or to embark on a career as an activist-writer who would use his pen to secure long-needed reforms in
the social and political fabric of his country. And because the space for agitating for changes in the
country was getting smaller by the day, it was time for him to leave. Under his leadership, together with
the other Filipino youth, the Reform- or Propaganda movement– as it became known, flourished and
triumphed. It triumphed not in the sense that it attained its main goals of obtaining parliamentary
representation for the Filipinos, and freedom of the press, for these did not come to pass, but in the
after- effects of its campaign, despite its apparent failure: other youths followed in their footsteps and
took the next step- to begin the campaign for separation and independence. This was carried out by
Bonifacio and the Katipunan, which launched the Revolution that, in turn, led to the birth of the Filipino
nation.

And so Rizal became a crusader for his country’s freedom. He decided that love of country should
supplant all other considerations, even that of his family or his own, or even of the woman he loved.
From his correspondence with friends and family, he remained constant to his Muse and his cause: the
Motherland and her freedom.

When he had completed his education, and his formation as a son deserving of the Motherland, Rizal
felt it was time to return to her. Friends and family stopped him from returning, but he was determined
to do so, for he believed that the true arena for the fight was his country itself, not some foreign land. In
a letter dated October 1891, Rizal wrote,

“If our countrymen are counting on us here in Europe, they are very much mistaken…The battlefield is
the Philippines: There is where we should meet…there we will help one another, there together we will
suffer or triumph perhaps. The majority of our compatriots in Europe are afraid, they flee from the fire,
and they are brave only so long as they are in a peaceful country! The Philippines should not count on
them; she should depend on her own strength.”8
Rizal returned to the land of his birth knowing that its liberty cannot be “obtained…without pain or
merit… nor is it granted gratis et amore.”9 He was prepared to return despite the risk of death, as he
had written in June 1892 days before his arrival in Manila: “I offer my life gladly… Let those who deny us
patriotism see that we know how to die for our duty and convictions…What does it matter to die, if one
dies for what one loves, for the Native Land?” Rizal returned and offered up his life for his nation’s
freedom four years later. Would that the nation born out of the ashes of his sacrifice continue to look up
to him and live up to the legacy he left behind.

http://nhcp.gov.ph/for-love-of-country/

Posted on September 19, 2012

THE PROBLEMS AFTER RIZAL

by Peter Jaynul V. Uckung

The real problem with Jose Rizal is that he was gone too soon. He never had the chance to see the
social cancer he so aptly described in his two novels, the Noli me tangere and El Filibusterismo mutate
into something more virulent, oppressive, controlling way of life. By being dead, he could do nothing
against the reincarnated social cancer, which continued to wreak havoc on the lives of the people, whose
freedom he had tried to redeem with his blood.

Born rich, Rizal had little touch with the daily miseries endured by the mass of Filipinos during his
time. Capable of furthering his studies, Rizal was the embodiment of the intellectual who firmly believed
that the enlightened, no matter what race, is above unreasoning prejudice.

His scholarly sojourn in Europe convinced him of the infallibility of Science, not only as a source of
truth, but as a conqueror of oppression. This belief was clearly based on an assumption which
presupposed the existence of willingness, a reservoir of goodwill and simple goodness within the
colonizer that would move him inevitably to correct the injustice done to the Filipino. Rizal’s call for
reform and assimilation attested to this unshakable belief. He died disowning the revolution. But his
death sounded the death knell to the colonial government of Spain in the Philippines.

Down came the tyrant priests, and with them came tumbling down all the feudalistic systems they
helped imposed on the land, in the name of unrestricted control of power and profit.

Two years after Rizal’s death, there was national euphoria with the opening of the Malolos Congress.

Freedom and democracy, it seemed was here to stay, the colonial crisis was finally over.

Or so it seemed.

In trying to find meaning and relevance between Rizal and the Filipinos after a hundred and fifty
years of his birth, even the shallowest of sceptic could say that the problems are not yet over, they were
never gone, they’ve just been molecularly restructured into something barely recognizable, and,
therefore, generally acceptable.

History is a very powerful tool for peace and progress, for it is only in assessing history that we could
justify social change. But to purge history of the lessons therein, one must be unforgivingly critical. One
must be like Rizal.

Here, the first sign of a revived colonialism is evident. It is the silencing of the critic. The critics are
silenced with assassination. Critics are silenced when they are killed, like Rizal. Like the missing activists,
or the broadcasters who were shot and buried in Cotabato.

Rizal certainly never experienced facing a problem which is defined by what happens to the stock
market, or the banks. When these two financial entities get into trouble and begin to collapse, then it is
called a crisis. And when big financial institutions collapse, too often the government bails them out by
using tax payers money. The rich, then, get richer and the poor get poorer. Shade of colonialism?
 The advent of technology has given the Filipinos a new range of jobs needing technical knowledge,
knowledge to use information and communication at the touch of a finger wherever and whenever. It
created companies needing legions and legions of Filipino call center agents with knowledge in
computers, giving a semblance that we are providing computer wizards, which is the cutting edge in
labor employment. But being high-tech is a myth of economic prosperity. There is a reality of low skill,
low-wage non-unionized job.

A modern day Rizal would have noticed this deceptive technological “bonanza”.

Rizal had always champion education as the key for eventual independence. He was no longer around
when the Americans implemented an educational system which gave even the poor the chance to go to
school. Today public education hardly serves as an avenue for acquiring critical thinking and
transformative reaction. Education mostly serves today as the initiator for the transmission of knowledge
instrumental to the existing society. A society dominated by the will of business corporations and foreign
powers who openly declare themselves democratic while ruling that the workers’ rights were literally
against the law. A modern day Rizal would have no problems finding his Capitan Tiago pandering around
business corporation owners and bowing to their wishes in exchange for monetary considerations, in
every nook and cranny of the government service.

Rizal was declared national hero and protector of the Filipinos, but will he be surprised with the
program of globalization, which has the underlying assumption that nationalism and protectionism are
incompatible with social and economic development.

Rizal wrote that the Filipinos were not naturally lazy. He defended his countrymen by explaining the
reasons affecting the lives of Filipinos. But mostly, he blamed the economic imperative of colonialism
that brought about social decay in the Philippines. Today, it is often heard that the Filipinos themselves
are to be blamed for their sorry lot, that culturally the Filipinos are inferior. And sometimes there is a
subtle acceptance encouraged by the schools on this assumption. The English language of the elite is
named correct usage, making the English of ordinary people inferior outlaw language. The nuances of
the elite have become the gauge of status symbol. This was an old colonial rationale which was supposed
to show the superiority of the colonizer, which linguistically disenfranchised many Filipinos.

Rizal had known long ago that the colonizer needed to inculcate in the Filipino a negative attitude
toward his own culture. The colonizers encouraged the Filipinos to reject their own culture by instilling a
false comprehension of their culture as something ugly and inferior.
 When Rizal wrote the Noli me tangere and El Filibusterismo, he dramatized as no one before had
done, the bitterness and alienation of the people. His reformatory approach to social change was to
exercise influence within established institutions rather than fighting institutions from the outside. It did
not work out. During the American regime, people shifted in strategy, perhaps remembering the futility
of the propaganda movement, and used legislation and court litigation to secure constitutional rights.
Later on, there were direct action techniques, utilizing the potential power of the masses along political
and economic lines. Example of this was mass civil disobedience, which will create the kind of social
dislocation that would bring attention and remedial actions from the government.

A hero is a social anomaly. The necessity for heroes reveals the ineffectivity of the government to
remedy the problems beguiling society. Often, as in Rizal’s time, the government was the one abetting
the problems, profiting from them, in expense of the people.

In reading and re-reading Rizal, especially his novels, which were twin vortices of truth, the reader
will be pulled deeper into a different hidden plane of philosophy that is so unlike Rizal, and more of the
dark, brooding filibustero we have come to know as Simoun, whose final purpose in life was to infiltrate
the colonial authorities and spread the fire of revolution among his people.

Rizal and others like him, are a menace to people and governments who derive super profits from an
impoverished people and who employ coercive instruments to keep the people meek and subservient,
the better to control them with.

They have to stop Rizal even when he’s already dead. But how can they stop an immensely popular
national memory like Rizal? They cannot stop him, that’s for sure, but they can mitigate the impact of his
legacy. By encasing Rizal in layers after layers of trivialities, so thick and obfuscatingly complex that Rizal
will only become a subject in school to be memorized and respected but eventually to be discarded as a
relic of the past, incoherent with the computer age.

Only those who fear the likes of Rizal know him as Shiva, the destroyer of worlds. And must prevent
people from ever knowing.
http://nhcp.gov.ph/the-problems-after-rizal/

Posted on September 19, 2012

DID RIZAL CONSIDER RETRACTING WHILE IN DAPITAN?

by Bryan Anthony C. Paraiso

Akin to walking on a mine field, the issue of José Rizal’s alleged retraction of his religious errors stirs
up the emotions of historians, flaring up into fiery debates between the pros and cons, without any
resolution in sight.

The thought of a disavowal of his beliefs is almost sacrilegious and improbable to Rizal’s character
and vehemence against oppression, as evidenced by a letter to Mariano Ponce on April 18, 1889: “…At
the sight of those injustices and cruelties…I swore to devote myself to avenge one day so many victims,
and with this idea in mind I have been studying and this can be read in all my works and writings. God
will someday give me an opportunity to carry out my promise.”

Of the religious orders, he writes: “…the friars are not what they pretend to be nor are they ministers
to Christ, the protector of the people, nor the support of the Spanish government…Don’t they show
cruelty? Don’t they instigate the government against the people? Don’t they manifest terror? Where
are sanctity, protection, and force?”

Rizal knew that his crusade might end in death, but revealed that he was unsure of his reaction: “…no
one knows how one should behave at that supreme instant, and perhaps I myself who preach and brag
so much might manifest more fear and less energy than (Fr. Jose) Burgos at that critical moment.”

Arguments on the retraction revolve around the veracity of the confession Rizal purportedly signed
prior to his execution and testimonies of several witnesses who had seen the act carried out.
 However, if Rizal did retract, when did he come to this decision? Was he weary of the struggle that he
decided to give in to the continuous urgings of the Jesuit fathers who were present at his death cell? Or
is it possible that Rizal had ruminated on retracting while still on exile in Dapitan?

Noted historian Fr. Jose Arcilla’s monumental multi-volume Jesuit Missionary Letters from Mindanao
contains several letters of the Jesuit Antonio Obach to his Mission Superior, which may shed light on this
matter. Obach wrote on July 28, 1895: “Rizal has just seen me and said (what has been jumping from
mouth to mouth of some who heard it from him), ‘Father Antonio, I no longer want further battles with
the friars, but live and work in peace.’

‘What you ought to do is retract all your errors and you will be at peace.’

‘I am ready to do what Your Reverence says, but under certain conditions.’

I gave him a pen and paper for him to write these conditions. In his own hand and style, he wrote:
‘Conditions I ask to retract references to the matter of the friars, and no longer meddle with them.’

—José Rizal

1. His freedom

2. Return to his family what has been confiscated or give its equivalent.

3. P50,000 to start a business to support himself

On fulfillment of these conditions, Rizal will write to the bishop.”

Does this letter provide irrefutable proof that Rizal had decided on retracting beforehand? What is
intriguing is that he had arrived at this decision, evidently, to spare his family from further suffering and
maltreatment.

Fr. Obach continues: “…Rizal says his family owned two houses of heavy materials, and he asks that
they be returned or their equivalent…I answered that the only thing I could do was to look into the
situation and if there is no difficulty, for I do not know how things are…As for the third, I said that I do
not think they would give him such a big amount. His plan…is to raise a huge cement plant which, on a
small scale…has been quite successful. But this third condition is not important, for without it, he is
ready to make a retraction provided his family is provided for. Besides, if they grant him this amount, it
would be on condition that he repays it.”

Obach’s letter also details Rizal’s initiative of opening a wholesale store in Dapitan to compete with
the Chinese traders, “who do nothing but cheat the Indios.” In fact, Rizal had prepared the statutes and
regulations of the Society of Dapitan Agriculturists, aiming to facilitate the easy buying, selling, and
storage of products for export, and curtailing the trade monopoly of the Chinese.

Obach believed that they had successfully persuaded Rizal to turn away from his errors: “I am
convinced that Rizal is now tired and wants to retract, but his pride strongly holds him back…I think he
will immediately break away from everything and he would be an excellent Christian.”

In a letter on the following day, Obach reports: “Regarding the letter I sent to Your Reverence which
contains Rizal’s retraction. I would ask you to send me a model retraction…In demanding that Rizal
indicate what has been taken from his family, perhaps it will be humiliating for the Dominican Fathers.
Rizal refuses, because in this way they will (have) him bound more tightly under obligation. On the other
hand, retracting is acknowledging his errors, and so it is his turn to humble himself…I await your letter
which I can read to Rizal to convince him what is better to do for God’s greater glory.”

By August 28, 1895, Obach recounted that Rizal requested for a detailed account of his errors: “…
Rizal came and asked me if I could draw up a list of his errors. ‘You can tell Fr. Ricart, I am ready to write,
and tell him that I myself will retract all errors I may have committed against the Roman Catholic and
Apostolic Church in my writings, and that he can make this same retraction public in the manner he
wants.’ But with this he stands to lose everything…”

Obach wrote that Rizal insisted that he and his family should receive some form of compensation for
all the troubles they endured: “But on condition that they give me P50,000 since I have no means to
support myself in decency, and with that amount I could bring my parents with me anywhere.” He no
longer talks of machines and cement, and so on, and he thinks that this amount is owed him because of
the harm inflicted on him.”

Are Father Antonio Obach’s letters a reliable source about Rizal’s situation? Will these revelations
provide new clues to his frame of mind during the few hours before his death? The mystery of Rizal’s
retraction deepens.
http://nhcp.gov.ph/did-rizal-consider-retracting-while-in-dapitan/