Instead of cliched oratorical and essay contests about Jose Rizal, we should celebrate his 150th birthday by resolving to do what he did during his lifetime. Rizal never had an idle moment. He wrote letters, delightful travel notes, sketched landscapes, published political essays, practiced ophthalmology, translated Han Christien Anderson for his nephews, wrote two seditious novels, poems and plays, studied languages, put together a library.
Rizal was also an organizer: He formed study groups for fellow expats in Spain, and what got him into real trouble with colonial authorities was La Liga Filipina which he inaugurated in a friend’s house in Tondo in July 1892. He was unceremoniously banished to Dapitan a week later; but, undaunted, Rizal opened a clinic and a school in Dapitan, built a potable water system for the town, landscaped its plaza with a relief map of Mindanao, engaged in agriculture, sent ethnographic handicraft and ontological specimens to his scientist friends in Europe.
Rizal spent long hours in the British Library (now British Museum) mining ancient tomes that revealed what life was like in these islands before the Spaniards came. His purpose was to show that far from being savages, the natives of these islands had their own political units, economy, foundries for making weapons of war as well as gold accessories, their own writing, spiritual beliefs, intangible traditions, arts, music and culture. Rizal wanted other native indios like him to feel proud of their past.
At the British Library, he found a 17th-century book, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, by Antonio de Morga, who served in the Philippines for many decades, as a military officer and head of the Royal Audiencia. He was also a lawyer. His Sucesos was the earliest historical narrative written by a layman and it was published in Mexico in 1609. Rizal copied Morga’s work by hand, diligently annotating it to correct factual errors and disparaging conclusions about the Filipinos. Rizal believed that decolonizing Morga’s work was the next best thing to writing a history of the Philippines.
In that spirit, the Manila Historical and Heritage Commission, the National Museum and DepEd Manila designed a museum tour for public schools of the city. Usually, huge groups of students are zoomed in and out of the National Museum but learn hardly anything because of the unexplained visual overload. Now, the plan is to form student batches that are sent to different galleries where they can focus on the exhibits for at least an hour before they move on to the next. Each batch will have a museum docent.
The first school to sign up for the Rizal @150 Museum Tour was the Mariano Marcos Memorial High School (MMMHS). Last 21 January three busloads arrived precisely at 8 a.m. at the Bulwagang Katipunan of the Manila City Hall to get a bird’s eye view of Philippine history from the mural by National Artist Carlos Francisco. I asked the students basic questions about our history and those who gave correct answers received books, courtesy of the National Historical Commission. At 9 a.m., we headed for the National Museum. Agents of Manila’s Traffic Bureau cleared vital intersections, so all three school buses got to the National Museum in 10 minutes flat.
As planned, the 150 MMHS students were divided into five groups and sent to designated exhibit galleries. They listened to their guides, took notes, studied each item, and asked lots of questions. In one of the galleries, remains of the shipwrecked galleon “San Diego ” were displayed with a facsimile of Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas. After all, it was Morga’s fault that the galleon sank. Apparently, when Dutch pirate, Oliver van Noort, threatened to invade, Morga, overloaded the galleon “San Diego ” with too many cannons so it sank. When the students saw the residue of Antonio de Morga’s folly. I think most of them understood why Rizal felt compelled to annotate the Sucesos.