IT TAKES TWO TO TANGO

It takes two to deliver a message, Rizal and his alter ego.

We look at Rizal not just man of letters but a medical practitioner. In his NOLI dedication, Rizal is not contented removing the veil to free Filipinos of their ignorance but also wanted those “liberated” must learn to read with the ability to make a critical analysis so as to arrive to rational conclusion.

Art imitates life is a familiar cliché. In baseball parlance, employing a “designated hitter” and “pinch hitting” is the name of the game. Almost at the end of NOLI we see Elias fatally shot while rowing a banca that he and Crisostomo Ibarra used to elude the Civil Guards along the Pasig River. Anchored in a safer area, Ibarra carried Elias to spend his last breath hovering between life and death, Rizal in the mouth of Elias said: “I die without seeing the dawn of my country. Those who will see it cherish and adore but don’t forget those who fell in the darkness of the night!”

In the FILI, Simoun was the designated hitter who cautioned Basilio that “Resignation is not always a virtue; it is a crime when it encourages oppression”. “There are no tyrants where there are no slaves.”

How pathetic to see a revolutionario getting confronted by a stark reality of a failed revolution. Pinch-hitting for Rizal is the native priest Father Florentino to do the homily to a wounded Simoun why a native uprising is doomed to fail. The revolution failed because the people are not ready for independence and because they are not ready for independence they don’t deserve it.

“Doubtless. Freedom, first of all, must be deserved. The Filipinos are to be blamed for their misfortune. They have to be less tolerant towards tyranny, ready to fight for their rights and to suffer. They are still ashamed of their rebellious thoughts, are filled by selfishness, and by their aspiration to seize their share of the booty, whose possession in the hands of the oppressors they detest. Why should they then be given independence? ” What good is independence if the slaves of today are the tyrants of tomorrow?”

Jose Sison Luzadas, KGOR