Philippines and Jose Rizal

RIZAL: THE PATRIOT, THE ARTIST, THE WRITER

A research paper presented to:
Dr. Antonio R. Yango
College of Computer Studies
University of Perpetual Help Laguna

In partial fulfillment
Of the requirement for the course
Communication Arts 2

By:
Joyce J. Bura
January 2012

INTRODUCTION:

It was Jose Rizal's Mother who told him about the story of the moth. One night, her mother noticed that Rizal was not paying any more attention to what she is saying. As she was staring at Rizal, then he was staring at the moth flying around the lamp. Then she told Rizal about the story related to it. There was a Mother and son Moth flying around the light of a candle. The Mother moth told her son not to go near the light because that was a fire and it could kill him easily. The son agreed. But he thought to himself that his mother was selfish because she doesn't want him to experience the kind of warmth that the light had given her. Then the son moth flew nearer. Soon, the wind blew the light of the candle and it reached the wings of the son moth and he died. Rizal's mother told him that if the son moth only listened to what his Mother said, then he wouldn't be killed by that fire. “Don’t imitate the young moth and don’t be disobedient; you’ll get burned like it.” – Mother of Rizal.
(http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Jose_Rizal_and_the_moth_anecdote#ixzz1kQPDw3zJ)

First of all we should clarify the meaning of a hero to make it quite simple to understand how Rizal became one. A hero symbolizes goodness. Rizal gave us freedom by using goodness. Jose Rizal became the Philippine national hero because he fought for freedom in a silent but powerful way. He expressed his love for the Philippines through his novels, essays and articles rather than through the use of force or aggression. He was a very amazing person at his time. He was humble, fighting for reforms through his writings instead of through a revolution. He used his intelligence, talents and skills in a more peaceful way rather than the aggressive way.

Jose Rizal, we know him as our national hero. His courage and sense of nationalism has helped to instigate the hearts of the Filipino people to rise up against their Spanish oppressors. The novels; Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo propelled him into becoming the leading proponent against the Spanish rule in the Philippines. Unfortunately these very noble acts have lead into his eventual capture and execution. The life he lived is a testament that nationalism within one person could envelop a whole country into a full blown revolution. Although in mainstream he is a patriot, but not much light is shown on his life as an artist. He is very prolific and made various paintings, sketches as well as sculptures. Having lots of sweethearts he made portraits of them and his closest friends such as Ferdinand Blumentritt and Juan Luna. Being an intellectual he also made anatomical drawings of insects and plants since he studied medicine during his years studying in the University of Sto. Tomas. Also, while travelling he liked to make panoramic paintings or pencil sketches of the landscapes of the places he passes by or stays in. However, his real talent laid in writing. At a very young age he is able to write poetry and simple essays and as he grew he made novels and also more poems and complex essays with deep meanings and messages addressing to the Filipinos with topics about education, religion and government. Truly, Jose Rizal is a true renaissance man. For one person he had managed to have the knowledge of both science and art. All of these skills have made him a person to be truly admired and as a role model to the Filipinos. Going through his works, the most significant ones are those made during his childhood years. Due to the fact that in some point in his life as an adult the things he believed in the past would be challenged and would radically change his views up until his death. Another is that his past works will greatly reflect him as he becomes the hero that his people knew him today. The following works are the most significant in my opinion based on the ideals he cherished most. The first one is his poem entitled: “Sa aking Kabataan.” This piece talks about many important issues. Love for our nation and native tongue is the main idea of the poem. Then if analyzed further it shows the effect of colonialism to the Philippines under Spain and how it greatly affected our culture as a nation. As he grew this became contradictory on what he had said, because he didn’t wrote his famous novels according to our native tongue but in Spanish.
Second are the sketches of his two sweethearts: Segunda Katigbak and Leonor Rivera. Because of his love he dedicated his time and effort into making portrait of them. However, neither of the two would be committed to Rizal. This pattern would continue to plague him woman after woman. It may seem he has a fear of settling down or as a gentleman because he knew that the path he has chosen could affect a lot of people especially his loved ones. Finally the third is his sculpture of the Sacred Heart of Christ. The main idea of his work was his devotion to Christianity. His faith to God would ultimately challenge as he becomes an adult. Furthermore, he finally cut his religious ties by joining the Freemasons and became a respected member in the fraternity. Again this contradiction to his earlier ideas is common throughout his works.
(http://www.scribd.com/doc/49581808/Jose-Rizal-A-Hero-and-an-Artist)

The story of the Philippines' national hero, Dr. José Rizal, and his family, is representative of the courageous spirit and moral intellect, the sublime quality of leadership, which makes possible the emergence of an independent nation from colonialized, disunited, or economically looted territories. Rizal's life and works, like those of Mohandas Ghandhi and Rabindranath Tagore in India, and Sun Yat-sen in China, catalyzed anti-colonial politics in Asia during the latter years of the 19th Century. José Rizal is rightly referred to as “the First Filipino,” and to this day, he stands as a challenge to his countrymen still struggling to overcome the legacy of four centuries of Spanish imperialism and 100 years of American occupation and control.

Rizal can be classed as a universal genius. He dedicated himself to the education of his countrymen. In pursuit of this task, he mastered languages, wrote poetry, and investigated many scientific fields outside of his formal training as an ophthalmic surgeon. He travelled widely, wrote extensively on many subjects, and even translated Friedrich Schiller's Wilhelm Tell and Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales into Tagalog, a native language of the Philippines. His crowning achievement would be the two novels that he wrote while in Europe. These Spanish texts, Noli Me Tangere and El filibusterismo, would unleash a series of incidents which would overthrow Spanish occupation, and lead to the recognition of the Philippines as a nation. However, the singular act of Rizal that gave birth to this new nation was his martyred death.
(http://www.schillerinstitute.org/educ/hist/rizal.html)

Jose Rizal was born, the seventh child of Francisco Mercado Rizal and Teodora Alonso, on June 19, 1861. His parents belonged to the middle class and lived on the tenant land owned by the friars in Calamba, Laguna. In his early childhood, Rizal was under the tutorship of his mother who taught him the three R’s. He mastered the alphabet at the age of three. After two years of tutoring, he could read the Spanish version of the Vulgate bible. When he was eight years old, he wrote a play in Tagalog and this was presented at a Calamba fiesta. Even at an early age, he showed artistic talent in painting and sculpture. Pepe Rizal’s formal schooling started when, at the age of eleven, he was admitted into the Ateneo Municipal which was then under the supervision of the Spanish Jesuits. The curriculum of the five-year secondary course (leading to the degree of Bachiller en Artes or AB), included subjects such as Christian doctrine, Sacred history, Latin, Spanish, Greek, French, English, Algebra, Trigonometry, Geometry, Universal history, Spanish history, Latin literature, rhetoric and poetics, Social ethics, Psychology, Logic and other branches of Philosophy. Young Rizal tackled his work as a genius would. He captured many honors in literary and artistic contests. He always had an edge over his classmates and he stayed at the top even during the written and oral examinations. His report cards were usually marked sobresaliente (excellent). Whenever there was an oratorical tilt, Pepe Rizal was there winning medals as usual. He wrote a play let in Spanish called "Junto al Pasig", which was presented in school. On the spiritual side of school activities, Rizal was also a high-point man. He was Prefect of the Sodality of Our Lady with Fr. Pablo Pastels, S.J. as the Director.
(http://www.admu.edu.ph/central/archives/joserizal.htm)

José Protacio Rizal Mercado y Alonzo Realonda, better known to the world as Jose Rizal, was a Freemason. He represented the quintessence of Filipino patriotism during the waning years of the Spanish rule and the influence of the Catholic Church in the Philippines. After 300 years of oppressive rule by Spain and the Catholic Church, in 1896, the Filipinos began what became an all-out revolt against Spain and the church. You may ask what Rizal’s crime was. He was executed for trying to lift the yoke of oppression by the Spanish Colonial government and the friars from his Filipino countrymen. He did not encourage sedition against Spain, but wanted more humane treatment of his countrymen mainly by the friars and to a lesser extent by the Spanish Colonial Administrators. He advocated political, clerical, and land acquisition reforms. In essence, he wanted an end to the discrimination, exploitation, and persecution of his Filipino countrymen. With the opening of the Suez Canal the travel time to Spain was reduced from four months to one month. It resulted in many liberal Spaniards going to the Philippines and eventually many Filipinos going to Spain and Europe. It was the Filipinos who benefited the most as they were able to cast off the bonds that restricted them in the Philippines, acquire a good education, and learn about the various European countries. Among those Filipinos who ventured abroad were young patriots like Jose Rizal, and Marcelo Del Pilar. The decade that followed the 1872, mutiny at the Cavite Arsenal due to the imposition of a tribute imposed on the native Filipino workers, was peaceful, but it was a tense peace at best, one that was imposed by the sword. The mutiny had been ruthlessly crushed by the Spanish officials who were urged to take cruel action by the friars. The colonial administration, exhorted by the friars was deeply impressed with what they saw as their crucial role in maintaining a Castilian civilization which along with the influence of the friars, required complete sovereignty over the Colony and unquestionable submission by the Filipino people which included a ban on Freemasonry. The educated Filipinos eventually became prime targets of persecution by the government and the church because they recognized the corruption and oppressive practices and raised very embarrassing questions. It was they who paid for the extravagant living and excesses of their Spanish overlords. It was the emerging intelligentsia who now became the victims of persecution by the church and the government. At the age of 21, Jose Rizal completed his scholastic career in Manila and in 1882, went to Spain and acquired his degree as a Doctor of Medicine, and also a license to practice Philosophy and the Fine Arts. During his stay in Spain, Rizal became a Master Mason in Acacia Lodge No. 9 in 1884. He later moved to France where he became a specialist in diseases of the eye. He also found time to join a French Masonic Lodge during his sojourn in France. In 1885, he went to Germany to study Schiller, after which he visited Austria. Jose Rizal became a cultured gentlemen who was comfortable at all levels of society. He later settled in Belgium for a period where he wrote his highly celebrated novel, "Noli Me Tangere" in Spanish. The title is Latin for "Touch me not." In his novel Jose Rizal exposed "conditions so sensitive in the Philippines, that they could not be touched by anybody." He unfolded a shocking tapestry of the Philippines that made his story the most influential political novel of that country in the nineteenth and twentieth century’s. In a letter to a friend, Rizal said: "The book contains things of which no one among us has spoken up to the present; they are so delicate that they cannot be touched by anybody. Insofar, as I am concerned, I have tried to do what nobody likes to do. I have endeavored to answer the false and malicious charges which for centuries had been heaped on us and our country; I have described the social condition, our life, our beliefs, our hopes and desires, our grievances, our grief’s; I have unmasked hypocrisy which, under the guise of religion, came to impoverish and brutalize us; I have distinguished the true religion from the false, from superstition, from that which traffics with the holy word to extract money, to make us believe in sorcery, of which Catholicism would be ashamed if it were aware of it.....The facts I narrate are all true and actually happened; I can prove them." Rizal's novel was an immediate success both in Spain and in the Philippines. Needless to say, the book was condemned and banned by the Colonial government and the Church. The friars maintained that if the Filipinos read the book they would be committing a mortal sin because it contained heresies and ideas contrary to our Holy Religion. Even though the book was banned, and most of the Filipinos were not literate in Spanish, the book became very popular. In 1891, Rizal published his second novel "El Filibusterismo" (The Subversive), a sequel to "Noli Me Tangere." In it he warned the Spanish authorities of an impending cataclysm unless steps were taken to ameliorate the conditions suffered by the Filipinos. In a later essay "Filipinas Dentro de Cien Anos" (The Philippines Within A Century) Rizal predicted that The Philippines either will remain under Spain, but with more rights and freedom, or will declare herself independent, after staining herself and the Mother Country with her own blood." When Rizal returned to the Philippines in 1892, he founded, "La Liga Filipina" (The Philippine League) an organization designed to bring about reforms in the government. By this time Jose Rizal had become anathema to the Spanish government and the friars; he was arrested and banished to Dapitan in Mindanaw. During the evening of the day the decree to banish Rizal was published, a handful of men took an oath to bind themselves into an association known in its short form as the "Katipunan" (Highest and Most Respectable Society of the Sons of the People). The organization was founded by Andres Bonifacio a patriot and a Freemason of humble origin. The membership of the "Katipunan" was almost entirely plebian. "The Katipunan" advocated independence from Spain. Bonifacio conferred with Rizal on how to bring it about, but Rizal cautioned him to seek reforms rather than independence because the so-called middle class would not support a revolution. Rizal proved to be right, but Bonifacio managed to arouse the less wealthy Filipinos to support a revolution against Spain which began in 1896. The revolution was inspired and led largely by Freemasons.
The Spanish colonial government and the friars were wrongly convinced that Rizal was a member of the "Katipunan" which he was not. They were also of the opinion that the Filipino.
(http://calodges.org/ncrl/RIZAL.html)

The researcher chose this topic because there is a great, vital need to study the works and life of Rizal. He is our greatest national hero; others described him as "the first greatest Filipino." He was a genius and the Pride of the Malayan race. He was a poet, doctor, architect, businessman, educator, economist, historian, inventor, musician, psychologist, sculptor, sociologist, ophthalmic surgeon, physicist and many more. He was a traveler and mastered 22 languages and has published many of his works with the highly nationalistic and revolutionary tendencies with the hope of securing political and social reforms in the Philippines during the Spanish era.
Noli Me Tangere is one of his books published in Berlin in 1877 which exposed the arrogance and despotism by the Spanish clergy and EL FILIBUSTERISMO as a sequel and more tragic than the NOLI was published on September 1891 in Ghent. He was fearless and stirred the political arena which resulted to his imprisonement. He was a political exile and even then it did not stop him from writing and teaching. Before his execution in Dec 30, 1896, he wrote an untitled poem which now known "MI ULTIMO ADIOS", Dr. Rizal was born on June 19, 1861, in Calamba, Laguna, and executed in the prime of his life by a squad of the 10th Spanish Infantry Regiment by being shot in the back at 7:00 a.m. on December 30, 1896 at the Campo de Bagumbayan located directly behind the Luneta in Manila. His execution was scheduled for 8:00 a.m. but it was secretly advanced 1 hour by the Spanish authorities to avoid any demonstration or possibly an uprising by the Filipino populace.

Rizal and His Works has been included in the curriculum by the Department of Education because his life and works inspire Filipinos, to be proud of their motherland and native-tongue, to prove that Filipinos are capable to be equal if not excel even to those who treat us as slave. His brilliance, determination, patience and perseverance are just few of his virtues whom us, Filipinos admired and undyingly referred to whenever we are in the lowest low.