Philippines' National Hero: Gat. Jose "The Great Malayan" Rizal

Your day is incomplete without him getting into your purse, maybe handed him to Manong driver or to peddlers along the streets here in the Philippines. I’m talking about the person in the One-Peso-Coin in the Philippines. Most of us know him as Gat. Jose Rizal and for some reasons his full-name is an always use to trivia games here in the country, for this matter, I know that you’re thinking right now about his full name while reading this one.

An awful truth; there are lots of hidden truths and conspiracies encircling his life, about why did the Philippine Government chose Rizal over Andres Bonifacio as National Hero. But for now I don’t want to talk about it, I just want to share with you his wonderful works and why did he’s tagged as “The Great Malayan”.

"There can be no tyrants where there are no slaves"Jose Rizal

Rizal for his young age, he already knows to speak Spanish language with the help of his mother. During in his early days Rizal fell in-love with knowledge and not just a typical child who plays all-day long. He kept himself in their family library. That’s why we can’t negate the truth that he is Physician, Ophthalmologist, Linguist, Poet, Novelist, Scientist, Author, Journalist and a Visual Artist. Rizal is also a polyglot, he spoke 12 languages that includes Japanese, Latin and German. Think of it, if millennials just love knowledge like Rizal, I’m sure we are not strangled anymore with the dilemma of the truth value of… “If there’s forever or none” just like the common post we can find in social-media sites.

Honestly, most Filipinos just know him as the author of Noli and El Fili the two novels that we studied for two long years in high school and by way we Filipinos always stereotype Filipino language teachers (also the teachers of these two novels) as grown-old lady.

I see this also as fault of our system, our own literature doesn’t excites us anymore. We tend to read Fifty shades over the novels that are blue-print of our liberty as a nation. We forgot that these novels lighten the burning desires of our forefathers to end the tyranny that lasts for over three-millennia. We didn’t even know the messages that mirrored Filipino cultures in every particular scenes of the two novels.

Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo (Touch me Not and The Filibuster)

Like this one, up until now we always crowned Filipinas as demure and a well-mannered-fine-lady but in Rizal’s book there’s a scene that is called “Suyuan sa Asutea” or Courtship at Asotea where Maria Clara kissed first Crisostomo Ibarra.

Crisostomo was shocked why Maria did that, so in a manner this scene debunk the Filipina Ladies that we know. Actually, Filipinas are also aggressive within when it comes to affairs of the heart. Rizal also portray the not-so-nice attitudes of his common countrymen at that time.

Sad to say, these novels Rizal became a fugitive in his own country and he knew that he would be a dead-man whenever he would go back to his motherland. Wear the shoe of Rizal contemplate the circumstances, would you go back to the place where you will meet your death? With a non-hesitant determination, Rizal went back to the Philippines.

"He who does not know how to look back at where he came from will never get to his destination"

When he came back to the Philippines, most Indios thought that Rizal is a deaman. Turn of events happened Rizal was just exiled in Dapitan a place in the southern part of the Philippines but the grudges of the Prayles and government officials gets worse knowing that Rizal is in the Philippines. They ordered Rizal to be shoot to death. On 30th day of December 1896, the time of waking up of the sun Rizal faced his death.

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Photo Sources:

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Other Sources:
Philippine History by Teodoro Agoncillo
Life and Works of Rizal by Gregorio Zaide

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