For me the Rizal Law RA1425 has not served its nationalism purposes [whatever my uncle Sen. Cosoy Rosales was goaded to reason by his older brod Julio Cardinal Rosales and the rest of the Catholics].
For one thing, I cannot imagine a true nationalist preferring martyrdom instead of wanting to escape to fight another day. I am happy to note that I have not heard of a captured UP NPA or a nationalist freedom fighter who went to the hills and who preferred to meekly submit for martyrdom while in captivity instead of doing all his best to escape and fight another day. Many will defend him saying Rizal was a pacifist. And so because he was one I should take kindly his non-violent prescriptions for reforms and continue to regard him as my first national hero?
Rizal had several opportunities to escape but he preferred the peace that death by firing squad brings! What a fake revolutionary hero! What a fool he was in his death!
What was he thinking? I am reminded that several years before his death he was caught leaving as a volunteer doctor to join the rebels in Cuba and yet for Bonifacio’s rebellion he would not lend a hand!!! For me, this is utterly out of mind.
Parang nasiraan na ng bait si Rizal sa paggusto niya ng martyrdom. For all his genius he failed to grasp that reforming the government and the church with his peculiar prescription - exposition in magazine and books - won't work. AND YET he wrote to Blumentritt in January 26, 1887, "A peaceful struggle shall always be a dream, for Spain will never learn the lesson of her South American colonies."
In that letter I found these words of his of interest, beyond the usual perfunctoriness, "quos vult perdere Jupiter, prius dementat! [Whom Jupiter wishes to destroy, he first sends mad]";
It was madness for Rizal to be so fixated to his peaceful reformist strategy that he knew could not be won. In his confused state of mind [aba siempre magulo, maski na ano pa ang sabihin ng mga Rizalistas, biro mo aalisan ka na ng buhay the following dawn!!] he wrote in his Ultima Adios -
On the field of battle, fighting with delirium, others give you their lives without doubts, without gloom
The site nought matters: cypress, laurel or lily: gibbet or open field: combat or cruel martyrdom are equal if demanded by country and home.
Rizal tried to vindicate his act of martyrdom as an ACT ALSO DEMANDED by country and home. This stanza was exploited by the smart Bonifacio as Rizal's farewell surrender that legitimately supports ANOTHER ACT DEMANDED by country and home - his Katipunero's revolution.
[I wonder really if there was no distortion of or subtle changes made on the original because of the surprising “dying testimony” of instantaneous and timely support for other non-peaceful means of getting reforms which were anathema to his vaunted pacifist advocacy that he supported until death and duly testified by his respecting the death sentence; an act proving his recognition of the state’s legitimacy;
[Respect for the State means to him following its dictates. Having said that made me asked, “Was the Ultimo Adios a fake, made to appear as secretly sent to the Katipuneros at the last moment?” Because of the incongruence that this stanza makes of Rizal’s diehard advocacy that he never surrendered even in death made me think Rizal lost his mind, and the fact that such a message meant a lot of propaganda mileage to the Katipuneros, I cannot discount the possibility.]
Why should I not try to escape when sometime tomorrow I will surely die and forever UNABLE to HELP my country gain reforms? Too late a question; Ok, so be it. Can't change history. But by his death, does anyone agree that the Spanish parliament started to initiate reforms to address Rizal’s gripes??? Big, big question, eh?
If there were no reforms initiated, what then was the purpose of Rizal’s martyrdom? Ah, only a last ditch letter would save it; the ultimo adios was to serve the Katipuneros and the country, and he would be remembered as abandoning his pacifism at the last hour and become a legitimate part of the revolution! Ah, brilliant maneuvering by the Great Plebeian, however, it fails because Rizal did not escape to be a big part of it, even as a volunteer doctor that the wounded would certainly need!
For me, Aguinaldo and Bonifacio were more in tune with the times and the then existing knowledge of tyrants and revolutions. They were vindicated when the Spanish forces were finally routed to surrender, thus proving Rizal WRONG! It took only a few years, a very short period in revolution time reckoning, a period beyond Rizal's imagination despite his brilliance.
While in prison I think he felt lost in hopeless appraisal of his reform efforts that he knew will not see results in his lifetime and there too was the dismal truth of his miserable failure to persuade the Katipuneros to cease from revolting as he saw it as only an exercise in futility.
In his fantastical but disturbed state of mind he was bizarrely prodded to romanticize [to use Addi's word] to end his utterly lost life as he was convince it was lost, in a blaze of gunfire without a fight so he can rest! Ah, a favorite reason for many mentally disturbed Christ-less patients to resort.
Hey, whom Jupiter [ehe, the Church, too?] wishes to destroy he first sends mad. How fittingly prophetic was it in Rizal’s case!!
History proved the Katipuneros were right and Rizal was wrong. But why did the Americans make him the foremost national hero? For obvious reasons for the intelligent Filipinos but never fully understood by the common tao!
However, Aguinaldo's rightful victory was unjustly taken away from him by the Americans who duped him and his katipuneros!
When the Americans became his masters his dream of independence turned to nothing and his glory of winning a great revolution forever lost. His new rulers, the Americans, had the same colonial strategy as the Spaniards - never make the Filipinos think and feel that they can win a revolution against their colonial masters. So they were determined to do their best to dismiss any credence to Aguinaldo’s revolution; instead they heaped praises to the lost pacifist cause of Rizal and to prove that his was the right way, when the right opportunity came, they pretended to magnanimously honor the Filipinos with their freedom on a silver platter, but we all know the trend then was to try a new experiment to continue its imperialistic designs in a subtler and ingenious way – neo-imperialism.
RIZAL revealed his true contra-nationalist intentions to his friend and German scholar Ferdinand Blumentritt in his two letters:
1. February 21, 1887
The Filipinos had long wished for Hispanization and they were wrong in aspiring for it. It is Spain and not the Philippines who ought to wish for the assimilation of the country. (Rizal-Blumentritt, 52]
2. January 26, 1887
A peaceful struggle shall always be a dream, for Spain will never learn the lesson of her South American colonies. Spain cannot learn what England and the United States have learned. But, under the present circumstances, we do not want separation from Spain. All that we ask is greater attention, better education, better government [officials], one or two representatives [in parliament], and greater security for persons and our properties. Spain could always win the appreciation of Filipinos if she were only reasonable. But, quos vult perdere Jupiter, prius dementat! Whom Jupiter wishes to destroy, he first sends mad"; (Rizal-Blumentritt].
Let the issue rest, eh? I don’t know. But I have a strange feeling that I cannot.
OF MORE SIGNIFICANCE to our EXPATS, OFs and OFWS interested in CONTINUING THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION OF THE KATIPUNEROS [such as Addi] is Rizal’s disagreement against the idea that those in Madrid can help their far-away Philippines. In late 1891 after he burned his bridges to the Madrid reformists and abandoned the propaganda campaign, he wrote [as La’ong La’an, his pen name],
If our countrymen hope in us here in Europe, they are certainly mistaken... The help we can give them is our lives in our own country. The error all make in thinking we can help here, far away, is a great mistake indeed. The medicine must be brought near to the sick man. Had I not been unwilling to shorten the lives of my parents, I would not have left the Philippines, no matter what happened. Those five months I stayed there were a model life, a book even better than the Noli me tangere. The field of battle is the Philippines; there is where we should be. (Schumacher's translation]
In his December 30, 1891 letter to his friend and mentor, the German scholar, Ferdinand Blumentritt, Rizal wrote:
Life in the Philippines has become impossible: without courtesy, without virtue, without justice! That is why I think that La Solidaridad is no longer the place to give battle; this is a new fight. I should like to follow your wishes, but I believe that it will all be in vain; the fight is no longer in Madrid. It is all a waste of time.
So he came home to do battle and lost his mind, forcing himself to commit suicide and made it look like he died a big shot martyr. He whom the Jupiter wish to destroy he first sends mad! But his madness was never lost to the opportunistic new rulers, the Americans, that transposed it to heroic heights above any of those who valiantly fought for freedom with their sweat and blood.
ON WITH THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION OF THE KATIPUNEROS!
CHEERS to the Rizalistas! NO OFFENSE MEANT, just trying to share some crazy ideas coming from the other side that could be true and very helpful to the cause of true nationalism.
Ogie
Psst... if taken in the correct light, this piece probably gives justice to Rizal as he truly was, what he really stood for - respecting the Spanish government as a first class Spanish citizen that he wanted every Filipino to be under his Spain, which is not bad at all; in fact, quite extra-ordinary for anyone to act at his time; and for it, he was a hero to Spain! Not of his native land, though. What an idiotic idea, no? Think again. Baka double lang ang binaril. Hehe… at nagbago ng buhay si Rizal. Ano nga ba iyon Ngo2? Si Hitler ay anak ni Rizal? Kung totoo, napakasama pala ng lahi ni Rizal! Hahaha… Sa totoo lang, hindi po maalis na magduda ang tao kay Rizal dahil nga kontra ng mga guardia civil at friars, tapos kakampihan ang Spain laban sa kanyang lahing Filipino; nandiri sumama kay Bonifacio at ginawa pa na national revolutionary hero ng mga Americans at misguided compatriots para sa ating Filipinas. Naku! If the Bible contains a lot of inconsistencies that give it a black eye, so do the inconsistencies in the written mass of historical accounts, articles, opinions, and studies on the intellectually controversial Rizal.
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