[130] And as to intellect, after studying irrigation for a while, Dr. Rizal was able to set up a water supply system using only simple equipment to solve the problems of uncleanliness and shortage of water which he had observed during his exile in Dapitan. This effort was greatly appreciated even by the Spanish government. And in addition to wiping out illiteracy among the local children, whom Dr. Rizal loved to the bottom of his heart, he began to study scientifically all the local plant and animal life on both sea and land. To his close friend Professor Blumentritt in Vienna (?) he sent many plants and animals which were as yet unknown to experts and they were given the name Rizalia.21 As an illustrator and sculptor, Dr. Rizal was awarded a prize at an exhibition held in Paris. He knew and could speak no fewer than thirteen languages.22 As a writer of two novels, Noli me tangere and El filibusterismo, he is regarded as a prophet of the revolution by his people, but as a deadly enemy by the priestly caste.23 The poem he wrote only hours before his execution is still regarded as a priceless inheritance by the appreciative masses.24
And in honesty to their principles and to the people, Rizal and Pak Tom have much in common. They were both aware of the particular importance of education and economic improvements for the people. To this end they each considered it important to cooperate with the foreign government in power in their country. It is my opinion that whatever a person’s own political position, one can respect leaders who are honest and consistent in their own principles and who work diligently with and for the people on the basis of those principles.
Pak Tom did not have his faith put to the test, but Dr. Rizal passed the test and gave up his own life for his views with a calmness and a determination unsurpassed by anyone of any nation at any time. Dr. Rizal can be criticized only for his excesses: he was too principled and too honest in confronting enemies who exhibited the morals and actions of snakes in the grass.25
He was the son of a middle peasant in the village of Calamba on the island of Luzon, raised in a society and family that practiced Catholicism, the religion honored by the common people in their daily life.26 Rizal, the doctor and founder of the Philippine republic, who was castigated by the priests as an atheist, was in fact a steel-willed person of principle who spoke according to his beliefs and acted according to his words.
[131] But measured on the revolutionary scale, Dr. Rizal was no Marx or Lenin, nor even comparable to his colleague on the banks of the Pearl River, Dr. Sun Yat-sen. A man of great intellect in many fields, a writer able to penetrate the consciousness of the masses, he nevertheless did not turn his powers to the situation, character, aims, and forces of the revolutionary movement. For Dr. Rizal, independence was contingent on the number of intellectuals and literates in the Philippines, on the strength of the colony’s industry, agriculture, and trade, and above all on the arms held by the masses for the seizure of power. It was beyond his ken that the dynamic of the revolution could give rise to unimagined forces, could confront arms superior in number and power, and could generate a real spirit everywhere, provided that the force of the masses had previously been gauged, awakened, and coordinated by an honest, aware, and disciplined leadership. His lack of contact with the masses (caused partly by the fact that he was always watched carefully by the government and the Spanish priests) meant that experience did not open his eyes to these possibilities. Dr. Rizal remained an intellectual in relative isolation from the masses.27
This was shown clearly during his exile in Dapitan.28 Given the authorities’ suspicion of La Liga Filipina and the exile of Dr. Rizal, the remaining leaders were averse to continuing open actions, even those of a mild nature. The secretary of La Liga Filipina appraised the situation and began to work underground. This secretary was Andres Bonifacio, famous in revolutionary history as the founder of the secret society Katipunan (the acronym for the name of an organization that had the appearance of a sort of Free Mason society but that actually united genuine revolutionaries).29 Andres Bonifacio came from a working-class family in Tondo on the outskirts of Manila and was the graduate of a primary school. As a lowly clerk in a store in Manila, he worked backbreakingly hard to support his many younger siblings. His school for learning about organization was La Liga Filipina, and he learned about society, politics, and revolution from reading books in his spare time. When the revolution broke out, police raided his house and seized several books on the French Revolution.
[132] After Rizal’s departure, Bonifacio appears to have worked actively in the underground. When he felt strong enough he sent several representatives to Dapitan to meet their leader, whom he regarded as his teacher.
So it was that one day several people arrived in Dapitan. With them they brought a “blind” person seeking treatment from Dr. Rizal. The young Spanish officer who guarded Rizal, and who had become his admirer, allowed the “blind” person and a couple of his friends to go in. But in the examination room, before receiving any treatment, the “blind” person suddenly opened his eyes and engaged the doctor in a discussion of the revolution. He had brought greetings and a message from Andres Bonifacio, secretary of La Liga Filipina. Andres considered that the time had come to unfurl the flag in independence, with Dr. Rizal as the leader of the revolution. Andres was ready, on receipt of Rizal’s approval, to attack Dapitan and effect his rescue.30
Dr. Rizal, an intellectual of international and universal stature, was astonished, and he rejected the proposal from Andres Bonifacio in no uncertain terms. His most important objection to the plan was the masses’ lack of arms.31
In fact, this weakness is one shared by all rebellious oppressed nations and classes from the time of Moses to the present day, including the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the present Indonesian revolution of 17 August 1945. There has never been an oppressed and exploited nation or caste whose arms have exceeded or even equalled those of the caste that oppressed it. You do not have to have an intellect of international caliber to see this. If a nation or caste could equal, let alone exceed, its enemy in possession of arms then it would not be oppressed. Neither equality nor superiority can be attained before the revolution, but only during or after it, if it is a real social and economic or national revolution organized in a disciplined fashion.
The “blind” person, now more open-eyed than the sighted, was absolutely amazed to hear this answer from Dr. Rizal. Upon hearing the answer, Andres Bonifacio, the worker from Tondo, graduate of the primary school, bitterly exclaimed “Lintik! [Heavens!] Where on earth did Dr. Rizal read that?” His remark did not, however, imply loss of respect and love for the person he regarded as his teacher in everything, as we shall see later in this story.32
[133] After the Spanish-American War broke out, Dr. Rizal offered to go to Cuba as a Red Cross doctor. His offer was accepted by the Spanish government and he left for Cuba. The priests in the Philippines attacked the government on this decision, however, and he was recalled. In Hong Kong he was met by his younger sister Eleonara (?).33 In Manila harbor the secret and official police were lying in wait. The conspiring priests had planted a false letter in Eleonara’s purse. This letter was to implicate Dr. Rizal in a secret society that the conspiring priests maintained was linked to him. His younger brother was tortured to unconsciousness twice but refused to bear false witness against his brother.34
Rizal was jailed and brought to trial, charged with being a rebel and trying to overthrow the Spanish government. The trial was rigged and stank of fabrication from beginning to end. Dr. Rizal had been arrested in order to be sentenced, and in essence was sentenced even before being tried. He was sentenced to be executed by a firing squad.
On his last night he was visited by his mother and his younger sister. His famous poem, “My Last Farewell,” which was to become a national inheritance, had been hidden in an oil lamp. “Send this lamp as a memento to my friend Professor Blumentritt,” he said. “There is something inside,” he added in a whisper to his sister. In this way were preserved for Philippine history the emotions of a Filipino hero, thinker, and man of wisdom, about to leave everything he had loved through his thirty-six-year life to face the bullets of Spanish imperialism