He became the action hero, re-invented himself. He applied not only his various educational training, but what he learnt from his travel experience. He showed the native merchant how to compete against the Chinese trade monopoly. The balikbayan did not write but set example and achieved great that remained concretely in the city of Dapitan. His years in Dapitan, he actually planted more than the dreams amazingly as a prisoner in Mindanao. If written or spoken words are enough, it is easy to champion a cause. Advocating by discussing or exposing issues are only starting softwares, sabi nga minsan panay salita lang. Here in Dapitan, he was more than the proverbial man of letters. Fr B F Nebres, SJ, the president of Ateneo took inventory of Rizal's achievement in the southern city.
Address at the awarding of the Knight Grand Cross of Rizal (sum-up)
(Note: On Dec. 30, 2006, the 110th death anniversary of Dr. Jose P. Rizal, University President Bienvenido F. Nebres, SJ, was conferred the Knight Grand Cross of Rizal by the Order of the Knights of Rizal, a chartered organization that commemorates and perpetuates the heroism of our national hero. The conferment ceremony, led by KOR Supreme Commander Hilario G. Davide Jr., former Supreme Court chief justice, was held at the international headquarters of the KOR in Manila. Fr. Nebres is the 41st KGCR since the organization was established as the "Orden de Caballeros de Rizal" in 1916. Below is the address delivered by Fr. Nebres during that momentous occasion.)
It is with great humility and deepest gratitude that I receive this great honor of the Knight Grand Cross of Rizal. I would like to thank from the heart Supreme Commander, Sir Hilario G. Davide, Jr., KGCR and the Order of the Knights of Rizal for this singular privilege.
There have always been two very strong drives in my life. One is towards the intellectual life and it is this that led me to enter into the world of pure mathematics. The other has been a deep love of country and a paramount goal of helping bring about a better life for our people. I think that my own love of country goes back to childhood, to land and family and friends, to reading the novels of Nemesio Caravana and others translated into Ilocano in the Bannawag. It has been the constant value in my life. But in college days, it was clearly Rizal who articulated this commitment and love for me. The Noli and Fili and the Ultimo Adios left an indelible mark on my vision and commitments and I constantly return to these lines from the Ultimo Adios as expressing as well my own hopes and dreams:
Mis suenos cuando joven y ya lleno de vigor
Fueron el verte un dia, joya del Mar del Oriente,
Secos tus negros ojos, alta la tersa frente
Sin ceno, sin arrugas, sin manchas de rubor.
My dreams when I was just a young adolescent,
My dreams when a young man, now filled with vigor
Were to see you one day, jewel of the Eastern sea,
Your dark eyes dried of tears, your brow held aloft
Unclouded, unfurrowed, unblemished and unashamed.
I have spent much of December working with our students and civic and religious leaders to respond in some small way to the tragedy experienced by our countrymen in Bicol and Marinduque. The theme of this year's Rizal Day celebration, "Rizalism: The key to Global Peace, Solidarity and Prosperity", takes on a particular urgency as we face the challenge of so many homeless and hungry kababayans.
The usual tradition in Rizal Day speeches is to quote from Rizal's writings excerpts about peace, solidarity and prosperity. These are clearly themes in his writings. But we have been quoting these writings for over a century now and I thought that for today it would be better to look at what Rizal did, not so much what he wrote, that can guide us towards peace, solidarity and prosperity. We can find this in the work he did during his four years in Dapitan, beginning 16 July 1892 till 31 July 1896.
Among the many Rizaliana items at the Ateneo de Manila Archives and Library (which include a rosary, pens, honor cards, prizes, and, on loan, the water heater where he hid the Ultimo Adios), we have a letter dated March 12, 1896, addressed to his sister, Sra. Dona Maria Rizal. We have the letter, because Maria was the grandmother of former Ateneo President, Fr. Jose A. Cruz. The letter is in Tagalog and it reads:
Minamahal kong kapatid:
Kalakip ang sulat ni Moris, bago pa lamang nagaaral sumulat. Mataba, maitim, ngunit marunong nang lumangoy ng kaunti. Malikot lamang totoo at malaro, palaging patakbo at sapagkat ang aming bahay ay de tembladeras, ay malimit mangahulog ang mga botellas. Matalas ang ulo, daig ang dalawa ni Osio sa magsaulo, ngunit daig siya ni Tan sa cuenta at sa ingles. Sa dahandahang cuenta ay daig silang lahat ni Osio.
Iginawa siya ng camisolang kanyamo ni Miss J. at totoong malakas pupunit ng damit. Padalhan mo ng sombrerong malapat ng hwag totoong umitim. Mabuti ang pagaalaga sa kanilang tatlo ni Miss J., at mahal sila sa kaniya, kaya siya lamang ang tawag-tawag ng lahat. Ang tawag nila aunty. Si Moris ay nagkakamisola lamang dahil sa malimit abutin sa salawal. Magaling mangastila si Moris, ngunit maraming kapusungan na galing Maynila, na mahirap maalis sa kaniyang bibig.
Ito na lamang, bumabati sa iyo si Miss J. Magutos ka sa iyong kapatid.
Jose Rizal
The boys mentioned here, Moris, Tan and Osio, were Rizal's nephews. Moris is Mauricio Cruz, the father of Fr. Jose A. Cruz, S.J., my predecessor as President of the Ateneo de Manila.
We have always known Rizal as a hero, greater than life. But here he is in normal human proportions. He is writing to his sister about his three nephews, one of them her son, Mauricio. He speaks of his wife Josephine Bracken (they could not be married officially, but that was not their fault) sewing clothes for the boys. Above all, he speaks of how they are doing in their studies -- a deep concern of his.
Health, Education, Business and Livelihood
I have chosen these three areas of Dr. Rizal's life in Dapitan to show how he sought to build community, solidarity, prosperity and peace. For several years now I have been explaining to whoever would like to listen that we need a new paradigm to understand poverty and to understand how our country is going to come out of poverty.
This framework comes from Dr. Amartya Sen, who won the Nobel-Prize in Economics several years ago for his work on Economics and Development. He has dedicated his life to understanding economics, development, and poverty. In several articles he says that in his study of countries that have made most progress out of poverty, he found that they attended to three fundamental concerns: basic health services (notably potable water), basic education, and access to reasonable credit.
The reason this works he says is that poverty is, of course, a poverty of resources, lack of income, lack of money. But more fundamentally, poverty is a poverty of capability. One needs opportunities (like jobs) to come out of poverty. But one can only take advantage of opportunities if one has the capability. Job opportunities may come, but if one has TB or Malaria, you will not be hired. Or if you have no high school education, you will not be hired. So the most fundamental aspect of poverty is lack of capability. And we can only build this capability through basic education and provision of basic health services.
This is what I have been seeking to promote at the Ateneo de Manila for the last several years. In health we have been working on the Leaders for Health Project which has been delivering leadership and management education to municipal health officers in over 50 4th and 5th class municipalities in Surigao del Norte, Western Samar, and Biliran. I have been gratified to find that after three years, serious progress has been made on their major need: potable drinking water.
We have also expanded our programs to help improve public elementary and high school education. Public schools, because 93% of our elementary pupils go to public schools and 80% to public high schools. I am especially happy to tell you that we have seen substantial improvement in the physical facilities and academic performance of elementary school students in several schools we have focused on in the Payatas area and in the elementary schools in the 23 poorest provinces.
One of our biggest involvements is with Gawad Kalinga. GK now has built over 20,000 homes in almost all provinces in the country. The Ateneo community now has several villages: 200 homes in Payatas 13, 100 in Gabaldon, about 50 in Milaor, Camarines Sur and we are starting new ones in Sitio Ruby and Molave in Payatas. We also expect to contribute towards a new village in Albay.
Sometimes you might think that Dr. Rizal would have been like many of our political leaders today, maraming salita, kaunting gawa. Because he wrote and spoke so well. But in his four years in Dapitan, he was puro gawa, kaunting salita. He provided health care. He provided education. He built water systems. He taught technology in agriculture and fishing. He did many things -- with his own hands -- to create a better life for people.
What has this to do with our theme of peace, solidarity and prosperity? I work with two organizations, Synergeia for basic education and Gawad Kalinga for building homes and communities, that have been working in Maguindanao, notably in the towns of Upi, Barira and Datu Paglas. Barira was the headquarters of the MILF, part of Camp Abubakar. Our young people working there have found that our brothers and sisters there, Muslims, Christians, Tirurays, have the same hopes and dreams we all have, a better future for their children. They find hope in Gawad Kalinga building homes and communities and in Synergeia and others working to give a better education for their children.
When the majority of our people will have decent homes, safe drinking water and basic health services, when they will have access to good elementary and high school education and thus the opportunity to build modest livelihoods for themselves and their families, then we will have the foundations for peace, solidarity, and prosperity.
Dr. Rizal understood that in Dapitan. In Spain and Manila, he wrote and preached against injustices. In Dapitan, he simply worked to create the foundations for a better life for the people. He may well have launched Gawad Kalinga a century ago.
Health
Let me begin with health. Soon after Rizal arrived in Dapitan, his former favorite teacher at the Ateneo Municipal, Fr. Francisco Sanchez was assigned as parish priest of Dapitan. The most famous work that Rizal and Fr. Sanchez did together was to build the relief map of Mindanao. They had wanted to build the relief map of the whole Philippines, but they were not able to complete it. Fr. Sanchez had brought surveying instruments with him. You might not know it, but while Rizal was studying medicine at the University of Santo Tomas, he was also taking part-time courses in surveying at the Ateneo de Manila and was a licensed surveyor. The relief map of Mindanao is one of his important legacies in Dapitan.
The more important collaboration between Rizal and the Jesuits was the water system. Fr. Sanchez wrote to Manila and asked that a Brother Juan Costa, who had built the water system in Balingasag, Misamis Oriental, be assigned to Dapitan. Dr. Rizal and Bro. Costa then worked on building the water system in Dapitan. An American engineer who later visited that site writes:
"Another famous and well-known water supply is that of Dapitan, Mindanao, designed and constructed by Dr. Rizal during his banishment in that municipality by the Spanish authorities. . . . This supply comes from a little mountain stream across the river from Dapitan and follows the contour of the country for the whole distance . . . The length of this aqueduct is several kilometers, and it winds in and out among the rocks and is carried across gullies in bamboo pipes held by rocks or brick piers to the distribution reservoir."
Today the Ateneo de Manila together with the Department of Health, Pfizer and other donors is engaged in helping build public health systems in several 4th and 5th class municipalities in the country, mainly in Surigao del Norte, in Western Samar, Biliran, and Camarines Sur. We are working with Doctors to the Barrios (much like Dr. Rizal) in 13 municipalities in Surigao del Norte. The first thing they did was to build aqueducts such as Dr. Rizal built, because in all these municipalities the greatest need is safe drinking water.
Moroever, of course, Dr. Rizal was a doctor and he built a little hospital where he treated patients who came from all sides. In an 1893 letter to Blumentritt he gave his clinic schedule as between breakfast and lunch time. Had he lived, he would have launched the Doctors to the Barrios long before Dr. Flavier did it. He would have given priority to developing water systems to provide potable water for poor rural communities.
Education
We note in Rizal's letter to his sister, Maria, how he talked about the education of his three nephews. In the same 1893 letter to Blumentritt, he continued that his schedule after lunch was to teach his young boys arithmetic, Spanish and English until 4 pm. Then he would do some farming. In the night he would read and study. In an 1893 letter, Fr. Sanchez writes: "In the afternoon of holydays, after the catechism class was over in the church and after the games of the youth in the plaza, Dr. Rizal and I would conduct an academy in education and fine arts. The meetings were held on the ground floor of the convento, attended by young people of Dapitan, to study drawing, Spanish, arithmetic, geography, etc. -- After I left Dapitan, Dr. Rizal continued this work."
So Rizal conducted the education of the youth in Dapitan on two levels: a basic level to teach them the fundamentals. And a higher level in the academy.
We know that Rizal considered education the most important way for Filipinos and the Philippines to achieve progress and a better life. He conducted this education in so many different ways: in actual classes as we described above, in constructing the map of Mindanao and thus teaching geography, surveying, scientific apparatus and scientific precision. He taught engineering in building the water system with the people and, as we shall see below, he taught them economics and business by building businesses and livelihood projects.
Had he lived, Dr. Rizal would have worked to build good schools in every town and barrio and would have helped create a practical education for all Filipinos.
Business, Economics, Housing and Livelihood
Rizal says that his daily schedule in Dapitan was divided between being a doctor, taking care of patients, teaching, studying and scholarship and farming and helping in the livelihood of people in Dapitan.
He bought a 70 hectare piece of land, planted 6,000 hemp plants, 1000 coconut trees, and many fruit-bearing trees. He brought in agricultural machinery from the U.S. to show modern methods of farming. He also brought in modern machines for modern hemp-stripping.
He noticed that the Dapitan fishermen were using very primitive methods and having only very small catches. He asked his brother-in-law to bring a big net for trawl fishing and to send him two good Calamba fishermen who could teach the Dapitan fishermen better methods of fishing.
He looked at the way the people built houses and structures and brought in a method he had seen in Belgium for making bricks. He invented a machine for making bricks which the people could use for houses and structures.
He understood the nature of business and engaged in business ventures from fishing to copra to hemp.
Had Rizal lived he would have understood the need for agricultural modernization, which we are still talking about today. He understood the meaning and process of technology transfer and was not afraid of modern technology. He would have brought in the technology that would help simple farmers and fishermen.
Summary
Today there is so much talk and so little done. I invite us then to look to Dr. Rizal's years in Dapitan and work in practical ways to build a better life for our people.
In this way we carry on the legacy of Dr. Jose Rizal.
In his years in Dapitan, we see a Rizal not of the Noli or the Fili or of many letters and poems, but a Rizal who said less and did a lot. He took care of the education of children, he attended to the needs of the Dapitan community, their health, their education, their livelihood, their culture and vision. In that way, he laid the foundation for peace, solidarity and prosperity among them.
May we be inspired by his example and do likewise.
Nestor Palugod Enriquez
www.filipinohome. com/rizal
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