National Historical Commission
MANILA, Philippines—A revived interest in Jose Rizal among teenage Filipinos can be credited to his ubiquitous image in T-shirts and advertisements that either sell merchandise or wishfully endorse his imagined presidency.
With the lackluster performance of our past governments, Rizal has become the poster boy for honesty and decency in leadership, receiving plaudits from unscrupulous politicians during election campaigns.
This is the million dollar question: How would have Rizal fared as President? A resounding success or failure? Everyone wonders what could have happened if he had escaped execution on December 30, 1896.
If Rizal had assumed an active leadership in the revolutionary government, could he have changed the course of Philippine history and the political maturation of the Filipino?
Otherwise, could he, like his Cuban contemporary José Martí, have led the charge and died in battle?
If Rizal survived, what challenges would he have faced with the birthing of our nation, given the factions competing for power and prestige in the first Philippine Republic?
‘If’ has become the operative word for futility and dashed probabilities among historians who rue the mistakes of the past and mischievous turns of fate.
Juicy love life
Nevertheless, Rizal’s popularity among college students also revolves around juicy gossip about his love life.
In our current parlance, he would be considered a “kilabot ng mga kolehiyala” (campus heartthrob) or a “mariner” with a girl in every port of call.
Even before embarking on his studies in Europe, Rizal must have been a clever and dashing young man, a greenhorn inadvertently breaking the hearts of young women. During his early amorous dalliance with Segunda Katigbak, he recorded in his diary:
“Little by little I was imbibing the sweetest poison of love as the conversation continued. Her glances were terrible for their sweetness and expressiveness; her voice was so sonorous that a certain fascination accompanied all her movements. From time to time a languid ray penetrated my heart and I felt something that until then was unknown to me. And, why did the years pass so rapidly that I didn’t have time to enjoy them? Finally when the clock struck seven, we took our leave of our respective sisters, and then she said: ‘Have you any order to give me?’ ‘Miss, I never had the custom of ordering women,’ I replied. ‘I expect them to command me.’”
Browsing through the reminiscences of his youthful love, readers would be struck by Rizal’s melancholic but cloying narrative, comparable to a tragic puppy love story.
‘How many loves’
On the way to Europe as a student, Rizal lamented in his travel diary the female friends he would miss:
“Oh, yes! How many loves, how many hearts, which could have made me happy, and nevertheless I’m abandoning them! Will I find them on my return, free just as I have left them? Leonores, Dolores, Ursulas, Felipas, Vicentas, Margaritas, and others: Other loves will hold your attention and soon you will forget the traveler. I’ll return, but I’ll find myself alone, because those who used to smile at me will save their charms for others more fortunate. And in the meantime, I fly after my vain idea, a false illusion perhaps. May I find my family intact and afterward die of happiness.”
Undeniably, Rizal was a hopeless romantic who desired to love and be loved in return, but was hindered by his sense of duty toward his family and country.
Dominant passion
However, his patriotic principles would be his dominant passion, overcoming his need for female companionship.
While in Hong Kong in 1891, anguished by his family and townsfolk’s expulsion from their farmlands in Calamba and the mistreatment of his relatives, Rizal became determined to carry on the reformist struggle on the shores of his homeland.
He was ardently focused on uniting Filipinos through La Liga Filipina, an organization committed to promote socio-political reforms, trade, education, agriculture and mutual defense. Rizal knew of the dangers in returning to the country, but he was prepared to face certain death.
On June 20, 1892, he wrote a letter addressed to his countrymen, with the expressed instruction that it be opened after his demise.
He initially expressed grief for all the sufferings endured by his parents, siblings and relatives on his account:
“The step that I have taken, or I am about to take, is undoubtedly very perilous, and I need not say that I have pondered on it a great deal. I realize that everyone is opposed to it; but I realize also that hardly anybody knows what is going on with my heart. I cannot live knowing that many are suffering unjust persecution on my account; I cannot live seeing my parents suffering in exile, deprived of the comforts of their home, far from their native land and friends; I cannot live seeing my siblings and their large families persecuted like criminals. I prefer to face death cheerfully and gladly give my life to free so many innocent persons from such unjust persecution.”
Die for duty
Rizal was presciently aware that his death would be a decisive moment in the nation’s history. He knew that others would take up his cause if he sacrificed himself through martyrdom, proving to his detractors that he could die without fear for the sake of his enlightened principles:
“Moreover, I wish to show those who deny us patriotism that we know how to die for our duty and our convictions. What matters death if one dies for what one loves, for native land and adored beings?
“If I know that I were the only pillar of Philippine politics and were I convinced that my countrymen were going to make use of my services, perhaps I would hesitate to take this step; but there are still others who can take my place to advantage …”
Rizal’s parting words in his letter were a final testament of his love for his fellow Filipinos and earnest concern for the country’s welfare:
Final love letter
“I have always loved my poor country and I am sure that I shall love her until my last moment, should men prove unjust to me. I shall die happy, satisfied with the thought that all I have suffered, my past, my present, and my future, my life, my loves, my joys, everything, I have sacrificed for love of her. Whatever my fate may be, I shall die blessing her and wishing her the dawn of her redemption.”
These are powerful words ringing with conviction, and aspirations for the country’s future development.
In these days when apathy for our history and heroes who fomented our national consciousness has become the norm, it is an opportune time for us to look back at Rizal’s final love letter to all Filipinos to realize the hard struggles and sacrifices one man had to make to ensure that we enjoy the rights and privileges of a free and democratic society today.
Credit and source:
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20101230-311624/Greatest-love-of-Rizal-the-romantic-dominated-his-passion-for-women
Curious Rizal was fascinated by the paranormal
By Bryan Anthony C. Paraiso
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 03:46:00 12/30/2010
Filed Under: history, Jose Rizal, Youth, Curiosities
MANILA, Philippines—Jose Rizal’s intellectual prowess continues to be an interesting topic of discussion for Filipinos, both young and old alike. For a man gifted with indubitable polymath abilities, Rizal has been transformed into a hero of mythic proportions whom parents hold up to their children to emulate in their studies to gain academic honors.
Filipino high school and college students, though awed by Rizal’s greatness, are understandably daunted by their parents’ wishes and often become indifferent to the hero’s life and works.
Deploring this situation, popular historian and National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) chair, Dr. Ambeth R. Ocampo, urges Filipinos to “see (Rizal) as a human person because it is only in Rizal’s humanity that you can see the secret of his greatness. If you see what he is like, you’ll see a human person inside the hero and you’ll see the Filipino capacity for greatness.”
With the commemoration of Rizal’s death at the end of the month, and the landmark celebration of his 150th birth anniversary on June 19, 2011, it is an opportune time to bare unconventional stories about our national hero’s genius and myriad interests.
Understanding phenomena
Aside from Rizal’s proclivity for the arts and sciences, it has been discovered that he was also interested in esoteric beliefs, applying empirical methods of inquiry and cross-cultural referencing to understand peculiar phenomena.
In this age, when children and adults alike enjoy fantasy stories in books and movies, to see Rizal as a curious scholar fascinated by indigenous folklore and the supernatural reveals a hero far more human than our glorified image of him.
Rizal’s interest in the arcane might have been fueled by several sueños tristes (sad dreams) that he recorded in his diaries and letters. In one instance, Rizal wrote in his diary entry for May 10, 1882, that he dreamed his brother Paciano had died suddenly. He intimated: “It is true that I had a dream once that was fulfilled. Before the examination for the first year in Medicine, I dreamed that I was asked certain questions but I didn’t mind them. When the examinations came, I was asked the questions in my dream. May God will that it might not happen to us!”
Prophetic dreams troubled Rizal and prompted him to pry into the mysterious sacred texts of Zoroastrianism. In 1884, he transcribed in Spanish three chapters of the Zend-Avesta Vendidad, which are prayers for ritual purification against evil influences. It is possible that Rizal’s latent clairvoyance and early forays into the occult led him to rationalize paranormal phenomena.
During his exile in Dapitan, Zamboanga del Norte, in November 1895, Rizal wrote a psychoanalytical monograph on bewitchment by the native sorceress (manggagaway) entitled La Curación de los Hechizados.
Initial criticism
In his essay, Rizal initially criticizes the mediocre medical practice in the country for the proliferation of superstition and witchcraft: “En Filipinas pasan por hechizados los que padecen de una enfermedad singular o desconocida para los curanderos y cuyo origen no se puede atribuir al aire, al calor, al frío, al vapor de tierra ni siqueira a la indigestión, únicas causas patogénicas que se admiten en el pais (In the Philippines, the bewitched are those who suffer from a disease unique or unknown to quacks and whose cause cannot be attributed to the air, heat, cold, vapor from the earth, nor even to indigestion, the only pathogenic causes accepted in the country).”
However, Rizal neither discounts the existence nor powers of local witches, but specifies the differences of their craft. The male sorcerer (mangkukulam) is regarded as the most potent since he ‘sheds tears of fire’ with a gaze that can ‘paralyze small animals, even flying birds.’ He indicates that sickness caused by the mangkukulam is incurable, but ascribes this to an innate ability to hypnotize or charm. Rizal actually empathizes with the mangkukulam, attributing these peculiar abilities to an unfortunate involuntary act.
In comparison, Rizal determines that the female n comparison, Rizal determines that the female manggagaway is particularly malevolent, practicing diabolical arts through two methods: “produciendo una lesión orgánica determinada, o un estado general con trastornos psicológicos (producing a fixed organic lesion or a general condition with psychological disturbances).”
Similar to West
To perform her deviltry, the manggagaway uses dolls or puppets similar to her Western counterpart to inflict injury on her intended victim through sympathetic magic. According to the late Jesuit folklorist Fr. Francisco R. Demetrio, this belief existed in Davao as late as the 1960s, where the witch called barangan destroys an enemy by pricking a cloth doll with needles.
Rizal points out that some innocent women, though known as shrews or prattlers, are suspected as manggagaway simply because of behavior considered aberrant by urbanized communities: “Un aire particular, una conducta algún tanto reservada y misteriosa, cierta manera de mirar, la poca frequencia a las prácticas religiosas, etc., bastan para granjear a la infeliz la fama de manggagaway. (A certain air, a behavior somewhat reserved and mysterious, a certain way of looking, infrequent attendance at religious services, and others, are enough to win for an unfortunate woman the reputation of manggagaway).”
To cure those afflicted by the manggagaway, Rizal acerbically derides quack healing through amulets and secret incantations, or whipping patients with a rattan cane or stingray’s tail (buntot pagi) ostensibly to drive away the witch’s possessing spirit.
Considering himself a philosopher-doctor, Rizal firmly asserts that the manggagaway’s bewitchment is an idea or evocation of suffering implanted in the victim’s mind: “Decimos que debe haber un caso de sugestión o auto-sugestión, puesto que obra como un poderoso contra hechizo el reto cara a cara, o sea, la rebelión contra esta influencia. Ahora bien: considerada bajo este aspecto la enfermedad, no hay duda que el principio en que se basa el tratamiento es, no sólo racional, no sólo está con arreglo a las teorías modernas sobre la sugestión, sino también el único que puede producir efectos (We say that it must be a case of suggestion or auto-suggestion inasmuch as the face- to-face challenge or rather the rebellion against the power of the sorcerer, is a potent counter-bewitchment. Well now, considering the illness under this aspect, there is no doubt that the principle on which its treatment is based is not only rational, not only is in accordance with modern theories on suggestion, but also the only one that can produce results).”
Still compelling
Rizal’s views on Philippine witchcraft, surprisingly, remains compelling today since modern scientific research have indicated the existence of the vast and untapped powers of the human mind: extra-sensory perception, psychokinesis, and psychological transference, which explains the powers exhibited by ancient shamans and witches. The paranormal remains strong in the country since remote communities cling to superstition, and crimes committed through hypnotism and suggestion by the budol-budol gang (which have also become widespread in Malaysia and Indonesia) give credence to the trance-inducing powers of our local witches. Historians and archivists continue to revere Rizal’s multidisciplinary erudition. Scholarship on his writings and discoveries had barely scratched the surface, and all that is needed is the diligence to pore through his letters and private papers to unearth a gold mine of knowledge.
The author is Shrine Curator of the National Historical Commission of the Philippines.
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http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20101230-311646/Curious-Rizal-was-fascinated-by-the-paranormal
