Writer:

Jose Rizal’s career as an activist was always connected to his writing. His pen was his gun and the letters
of every word was his ammunition, his nationalist pride started at the age of eight when he create his
first poem named “Sa aking Kabata” which he tells us that we should be proud of our language and our
Filipino spirit and how we should not forget our roots. Rizal also wrote a poem for a contest when he
was eighteen years old called “A La Juventud Filipina”, it is an announcement and a call for the Filipino
youth to rise and reach their potential and harness it for the better future of the Philippines. Rizal
encouraged the Youth to break the cycle of ignorance and seek freedom.

Longing for freedom is the reason as to why Jose Rizal wrote his book “Noli Me Tangere” and “El
Filibusterismo”. It is a wakeup call to the youth and also the Filipinos and even though these literary
were written during the Spanish Colonial times, the oppressive issue ignorance still continue to this day.
Our country's economy is not doing so well, we have a lot of debt and many internal issues unresolved,
and only a few years from now, our generation and the next will be handling those problems but we can
stop it by taking an initiative to help our country.

Activist:

Ever since Jose Rizal travel across Madrid, his political view has been widen than ever before. He had
seen how the students of Madrid were able to voice their complaints openly, although with violent
consequences, protesting of academic freedom across their campus. Rizal had this on full display and he
daily writes about it on a letter for his family to read and soon he will write articles for the people of the
Philippines to read. Even though he never actively participates in the rallies, he documents what he
learned from the student activist and this has disillusioned him over the state of his mother country on
how the Filipinos were compliant on the oppressive system of the Spaniards and they weren’t given a
chance to fight for their rights and opinions. The voices of the Philippine mass were caged under the
authoritarian rule of the Spaniard government and its friars and because of what happened in his college
campus, Jose Rizal began to take interest in political and social developments in his adopted country
which he soon use it in his later career as an activist for the Philippines.

Rizal became a part of the Propaganda Movement; which they demanded a conversion from being a
colony to a province of Spain so that the Filipinos has the citizen rights accorded to Spanish citizen, the
expulsion of the Spanish friars from Philippine soil, and a cultural movement showcasing writing and
artistic production among the younger generation. Albeit, the movement became a failure due to the
cause for the elite and not the lower class Filipino citizen however this became a start for the Filipino
minds to open their minds and fight for their rights. Even though Rizal doesn’t want for the Filipinos to
fight their oppressors in a violent manner, he does help them in a different way which is writing essay
and his two famous literatures; “Noli Me Tangere” and “El Filibusterismo”.

As the years and generations go by, this mind set to fight and to voice the opinions of the masses had
become a never changing fact to our society. Teenagers and students have the ability to protest to the
authority using social media without the fear of dying and be imprisoned wrongfully but some of their
peers also abused this new found power to also give way to other agenda that that could damage their
community. We should learn from the mistake of Rizal and his Propaganda Movement and that lesson is
to include the thought of the masses and their benefit before you voice your opinion and protest what is
right for our country. Educate yourself and widen your horizon because that’s what Rizal wants for the
newer generations to do.

Reference:

https://www.bulatlat.com/2011/11/24/jose-rizal-the-student-and-his-activism/

https://nhcp.gov.ph/the-role-of-student-activism-in-the-philippine-independence/

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaophthalmology/fullarticle/265463

http://writingsofrizal.weebly.com/a-la-juventud-filipina.html

https://phdessay.com/dr-jose-rizal/