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Rizal Topic

Rizal is considered the Philippines' foremost national hero because he played an admirable role in advancing Filipino nationalism through his writings and propaganda campaign against the Spanish colonial government from 1882 to 1896. Specifically, his novel Noli Me Tangere contributed greatly to forming a Filipino identity and received praise from critics for being superior to works by other Filipino writers that addressed Spanish colonial abuses. While Rizal's writings received praise from admirers, they also generated significant hostility and condemnation from opponents who viewed them as heretical, impious, and threatening to Spanish rule in the Philippines. This debate over recognizing Rizal's legacy continued into the mid-20th century.

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40 views2 pages

Rizal Topic

Rizal is considered the Philippines' foremost national hero because he played an admirable role in advancing Filipino nationalism through his writings and propaganda campaign against the Spanish colonial government from 1882 to 1896. Specifically, his novel Noli Me Tangere contributed greatly to forming a Filipino identity and received praise from critics for being superior to works by other Filipino writers that addressed Spanish colonial abuses. While Rizal's writings received praise from admirers, they also generated significant hostility and condemnation from opponents who viewed them as heretical, impious, and threatening to Spanish rule in the Philippines. This debate over recognizing Rizal's legacy continued into the mid-20th century.

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In an article entitled, “Who Made Rizal Our Foremost National Hero and Why?

,” the author,
Esteban A. de Ocampo, denies the claim that Rizal is a made-to-order national hero
manufactured by the Americans, mainly by Civil Governor William Howard Taft. Instead, he
defended Rizal as the country’s foremost hero. This was done, allegedly, in the following
manner:

"And now, gentlemen, you must have a national hero". These were sup-
posed to be the words addressed by Gov. Taft to Mssrs. Pardo de Tavera,
Legarda and Luzurriaga, Filipino members of the Philippine Commission,
of which Taft was the chairman. It was further reported that "in the
subsequent discussion in which the rival merits of the revolutionary heroes
(Marcelo H. del Pilar, Graciano Lopez Jaena, Gen. Antonio Luna,
EmilioJacinto were considered, the final choice—now universally acclaimed
wise one - was Rizal. And so history was made."
De Ocampo’s justification is founded on the definition of the term “hero,” which he took from
the Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language, that a hero is "a prominent
or central personage taking admirable part in any remarkable action or event". Also, "a person of
distinguished valor or enterprise in danger". And finally, he is a man "honored after death by
public worship, because of exceptional service to mankind".
Why is Rizal a hero, more correctly, our foremost national hero? It was said in the article that he
is our greatest hero because he took an “admirable part” in the Propaganda Campaign from
1882-1896. His Noli Me Tangere (Berlin, 1887) contributed tremendously to the formation of
Filipino nationality and was said to be far superior than those published by Pedro Paterno’s
Ninay in Madrid in 1885; Marcelo H. del Pilar’s La Soberania Monacal in Barcelona in 1889,
Graciano Lopez Jaena’s Discursos y Articulos Varios, also in Barcelona in 1891; and Antonio
Luna’s Impresiones in Madrid in 1893. This claim was evident in the comments that Rizal
received from Antonio Ma. Regidor and Professor. Ferdinand Blumentritt. Regidor, a Filipino
exile of 1872 in London, said that "the book was superior" and that if "don Quixote has made its
author immortal because he exposed to the world the sufferings of Spain, your Noli Me Tangere
will bring you equal glory…"
Blumentritt, on the other hand, after reading Rizal’s Noli, wrote and congratulated its author,
saying among other things: "Your work, as we Germans say, has been written w/ the blood of the
heart... Your work has exceeded my hopes and I consider myself happy to have been honored by
your friendship. Not only I, but also your country, may feel happy for having in you a patriotic
and loyal son. If you continue so, you will be to your people one of those great men who will
exercise a determinative influence over the progress of their spiritual life."
While Rizal’s friends and admirers praised him and his Noli with justifiable pride, his enemies
were equally loud and bitter in attacking and condemning the same. Perhaps no other work has,
up to this day, aroused as much hostile and spiteful argument not only among our people but also
among reactionary foreigners as the Noli of Rizal. In the Philippines alone, De Ocampo shared in
his article that Rizal’s novel was attacked and condemned by a faculty committee of a Manila
university (UST) and by the permanent censorship commission in 1887 because the committee
found the book "heretical, impious, and scandalous to the religious order, and unpatriotic and
subversive to the public order, libelous to the government of Spain and to its political policies in
these islands", while the commission recommended that "the I mportation, reproduction, and
circulation of this pernicious book in the islands be absolutely prohibited." Coming down to our
time, during the congressional discus-sions and hearings on the Rizal (Noili-Fili) in 1956, the
proponents and opponents of the bill also engaged themselves in a bitter and long drawn-out
debate that finally resulted in the enactment of a compromise measure, now known as RA 1425.

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