“RIZAL’S ANTI-AMERICANISM”

Two years ago I wrote a column on Rizal’s impressions of America. Rizal was impressed
by the country but didn’t like the people. In his travel diaries, he wrote of a train ride he took
from Paris to Dieppe in 1889 where boorish American gave him the best reason for his low
regard for Americans.

Rizal was assigned a small, hot compartment with six other people. Opposite him was an
Englishman and two Frenchman “who didn’t talk nor shut their eyes the whole trip.” There
were three Americans on board. Two had “long beards exactly like those I saw as a child in Jules
Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon. These two hardly spoke but the third, who had only a
moustache, had all the appearance of an American humbug and spoke a lot. Rizal continued
thus:

While waiting for the train to depart, the americano with the fisonomia
hambuguera [I think he means mayabang, as in hambog ] started talking. He found
everything in Paris bad: Exposition, Eiffel Tower, cafes, restaurants, etc. Nothing was
comparable to New York. New York here, New York there, New York everywhere; there
was nothing like New York. From time to time the Englishman would say, “Oh, indeed!”
……………..Speaking of St. Paul in London, the hambog said “It is the dirtiest place
in the world I have seen.”
“Oh, indeed,” the Englishman replied wryly.

Our Rizal could hardly contain himself so he said to himself “….he must have seen little
of the world and even less oh his country, for I believe that without going outside of New York,
one can find places there dirtier than the plaza of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.”

Rizal wanted to reply, but the hambog added later that “Pittsburgh is the dirtiest city I
have ever seen in the world!”

Rizal sighed and kept his peace. He wrote, “I was beginning to be annoyed by the fury of
the traveler and I was going to join the conversation to tell him what I have seen and endured in
America, in New York itself, how many troubles and what torture the customs [and immigration]
in the United States made us suffer.” So for those who hate the U.S. port of entry, be consoled
that Rizal suffered too [Hindi ka nag-iisa!] the demands of deliveries, barbers, etc. [Rizal hated
the obligatory tip], “people who as in many other places, lived on travelers…”

Rizal was relieved when the train started moving and the americano fell asleep. He
blamed the strong coffee he had taken earlier for his sleeplessness, but then realized that it was
the asshole on board that got him all worked up. And he wrote. “I was tempted to believe that
my man’s verbosity, being a good Yankee, came from the steam of a boiler inside his body, and I
even imagine seeing in him a robot created and hurled to the world by the Americans, a robot
with a perfect engine made to discredit Europe…..” Evidently, Rizal was a European in spirit and
felt slighted by the unfair comparisons between Europe and America. What surprised him was
that although he disliked the Spaniards, he was compelled to defend Spain and Europe in front
of this annoying American.

The man must have been so irritating that Rizal even regretted knowing other
languages: “It is also a misfortune to understand various languages, because thus, one has more
occasions to hear stupidities and nonsense. Lord I said, thinking of God – because regardless of
what the friars say, I believe in God – if for six or seven languages that I scarcely understand I
sometimes have unpleasant moments because of nonsense I hear, what moments would God
have, God who understands, all languages, not only of men but also of animals? If I who am little
less than ignorance itself am so irritated to hear the stupid designs of only one man, how will
God feel. God who is wisdom itself? How will God feel when he hears our stupid intentions, our
foolish pretensions and especially the qualifications and attributes of those who dare to
measure, define and interpret god, those whose occupation is ignorance, whose dogma is
blindness, whose covenant is obscurantism?”

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 At this point I could not tell who Rizal hated most: the americano or the friars. Rizal was
happy for the rest of the night because no one snores, or put his leg on him or used his shoulder
as a pillow on. Rizal’s only problem was that each time the train stopped, the hambugero
americano opened his big mouth and rattled again, always starting where he left off. Rizal glared
at him, but as they say, “Hindi makuha sa tingin”. After exhausting all the complains about Paris,
the americano started to extol the beauty of New York – its monuments, buildings, restaurants,
people – to which the Englishman dryly said, “Oh are they?” The americano was so dense he
didn’t know the English-speaking passengers hated his guts. Rizal was saved from further torture
by getting off at Dieppe.

Not all Americans are stupid or bad, but like Rizal many of us form our conclusions and
biases when we encounter ignorant or unfeeling Americans who should be kept in America. Our
love-hate relationship with America goes beyond the military bases and into the American
colonial period, the Fil-American war, and the way they grabbed our independence from
Aguinaldo in 1898.

I always wonder what would have happened if Rizal was not shot in 1896. Would he
have joined the American colonial service like most of his friends? With this amusing but
relatively unknown part of his diaries. I can assume if Rizal were alive today, he would probably
be railing against the U.S. bases, too. (02/22/90)

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