Who Made Rizal Our Foremost National

Hero, and Why?

Dr. Jose Rizal Mercado y Alonso, or simply Jose Rizal (1861-1896), is unquestionably the greatest hero and
martyr of our nation. The day of his birth the day of his execution are fittingly commemorated by all
classes of our people throughout the length and breadth of this country & even by Filipinos & their friends
abroad. His name is a byword in every Filipino home while his picture adorns the postage stamp & paper
money of widest circulation. No other Filipino hero can surpass Rizal in the number of towns, barrios, &
streets named after him; in the number of educational institutions, societies, & trade names that bear his
name; in the number of persons, both Filipinos and foreigners, who were named "Rizal" or "Rizalina"
because of their parents’ admiration for the Great Malayan; & in the number of laws, Executive Orders and
Proclamations of the Chief Executive, and bulletins, memoranda, & circulars of both the bureaus of public and
private schools. Who is the Filipino writer and thinker whose teachings and noble thoughts have been
frequently invoked and quoted by authors and public speakers on almost all occasions? None but Rizal. And
why is this so? Because as biographer Rafael Palma (1) said, "The doctrines of Rizal are not for one
epoch but for all epochs. They are as valid today as they were yesterday. It cannot be said that
because the political ideals of Rizal have been achieved, because of the change in the institutions,
the wisdom of his counsels or the value of his doctrines have ceased to be opportune. They have
not."
Unfortunately, however, there are still some Filipinos who entertain the belief that Rizal is a "made-to-
order" national hero, and that the maker or manufacturer in this case were the Americans, particularly Civil
Governor William Howard Taft. This was done allegedly, in the following manner:
"And now, gentlemen, you must have a national hero". These were supposed 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 (M. H. del Pilar, Graciano Lopez Jaena, Gen. Antonio
Luna, Emilio Jacinto, and Andres Bonifacio—O.) were considered, the final choice—now universally
acclaimed a wise one—was Rizal. And so history was made."(2)
This article will attempt to answer two questions: 1) Who made Rizal the foremost national hero and 2) Why
is Rizal our greatest national hero? Before proceeding to answer these queries, it will be better if we first
know the meaning of the term hero. According to Webster’s New International Dictionary of the
English Language, 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, nay, our foremost national hero? He is our greatest hero because as a towering
figure in the Propaganda Campaign, he took an "admirable part" in that movement w/c roughly covered
the period from 1882-1896. If we were asked to pick out a single work by a Filipino writer during this
period, more than any writer writing, contributed tremendously to the formation of Filipino nationality, we
shall have no hesitation tin choosing Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere (Berlin, 1887). It is true that Pedro Paterno
published his novel, Ninay, in Madrid in 1885; M. H. del Pilar his La Soberania Monacal in Barcelona in
1889, Graciano Lopez Jaena, his Discursos y Articulos Varios, also in Barcelona in 1891; & Antonio
Luna, his Impresiones in Madrid in 1893, but none of these books had evoked such favorable and
unfavorable comments from friends and foes alike as did Rizal’s Noli.
Typical of the encomiums that the hero received for his novel were those received from Antonio Ma.
Regidor and Prof. 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…" (3) Blumentritt, 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 & 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." (4)
If Rizal’s friends & admirers praised w/ justifiable pride the Noli & its author, his enemies were equally
loud & bitter in attacking and condemning the same. Perhaps no other work has, up to this day, aroused as
much acrimonious debate not only among our people but also among reactionary foreigners as the Noli of
Rizal. In the Philippines the hero’s novel was attacked and condemned by a faculty committee of a Manila
university (UST) and by the permanent censorship commission in 1887. the committee said that it found the
book "heretical, impious, and scandalous to the religious order, & unpatriotic and subversive to the public
order, libelous to the govt. of Spain and to its political policies in these islands", while the commission
recommended that "the importation, reproduction, and circulation of this pernicious book in the islands be
absolutely prohibited." (5) Coming down to our time, during the congressional discussions 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 the finally resulted in the enactment of a compromise measure, now known as RA
1425.
The attacks on Rizal’s 1st novel were not only confined in the Philippines but were also staged in the
Spanish capital. There, Sen. Vida, Deputy (& ex-general) Luis de Pando and Premier Praxedes Mateo
Sagasta were among those who unjustly lambasted and criticized Rizal & his Noli in the 2 chambers of the
Spanish Cortes in 1888 and 1889. (6) it is comforting to learn however, that about 13 years later, Cong.
Henry Allen Cooper of Wisconsin delivered an eulogy of Rizala and even recited the martyr’s Ultimo
Pensamiento on the floor of the U. S. House of Representatives in order to prove the capacity of the
Filipinos for self- government. He said in part: "It has been said that, if American institutions had done
nothing else to furnish to the world the character of George Washington, that alone would entitle them to
the respect of mankind. So Sir, I say to all those who denounces the Filipinos indiscriminately as
barbarians and savages, w/o possibility of a civilized future, that this despised race proved itself entitled to
their respect and to the respect of mankind when it furnished to the world the character of Jose
Rizal."(7) The result of this appeal was the approval of what is popularly known as the Philippine Bill of
1902.
The preceding paragraphs have shown that by the Noli alone Rizal, among his contemporaries, had
become the most prominent/ the central figure of the Propaganda Movement.
Again, we ask the question: why did Rizal, become the greatest Filipino hero? Because in this writer’s
humble opinion, no Filipino has yet been born who could equal or surpass Rizal as a "person of
distinguished valor/enterprise in danger, fortitude in suffering." Of these traits of our hero, let us see what
a Filipino and an American biographer said:
"What is most admirable in Rizal," wrote Rafael Palma, is his complete self-denial, his complete
abandonment of his personal interests to think only of those of his country. He could have been whatever
he wished to be, considering his natural endowmwnts; he could have earned considerable sums of
money from his profession; he could have lived relatively rich, happy, prosperous, had he not dedicated
himself to public matters. But in him, the voice of the species was stronger than the voice of personal
progress or of private fortune,and he preferred to live far from his family and to sacrifice his personal
affections for an ideal he had dreamed of. He heeded not his brother, not even his parents, beings whom
he respected and venerated so much, in order to follow the road his conscience had traced for him.
He did not have great means at his disposal to carry out his campaign, but that did not discouraged him;
he contented himself w/ what he had. He suffered the rigors of the cold winter of Europe, he suffered
hunger, privation, and misery; but when he raised his eyes to heaven and saw his ideal, his hope was reborn.
He complained of his countrymen, he complained of some of those who had promosed him help and did not
help him, until at times, profoundly disillusioned, he wanted to renounce his campaign forever, giving up
everything. But such moments are evanescent, he soon felt comforted & resumed the task of bearing the
cross of his suffering." (8)

Dr. Frank C. Laubach, an American biographer of Rizal, spoke of the hero’s coueage in the following
words:
His consuming life purpose was the secret of his moral courage. Physical courage, it is true, was one of
his inherited traits. But that high courage to die loving his murderers, w/c he at last achieved--that cannot
be inherited. It must be forged out in the fires of suffering and temptation. As we read through his life, we
can see how the moral sinew and fiber grew year by year as he faced new perils & was forced to make
fearful decisions. It required courage to write his 2 great novels telling nothing that no otherman has
ventured to say before, standing almost alone against the powerful interests in the country and in Spain, and
knowing full well that despotism would strike back. He had reached another loftier plateau of heroism
when he wrote those letters to Hong Kong, "To be opened after my death",and sailed to the "trap" in Manila
w/o any illusions. Then in his Dapitan exile when he was tempted to escape, and said "No", not once but
hundreds of times for 4 long years, and when, on the way to Cuba, Pedro Roxas pleaded w/ him to step off the boat
of Singapore upon British territory and save his life, what an inner struggle it must have caused him to answer over
and over again, "No, no, no!" When the sentence of death and the fateful morning of his execution brought the final
test, 30 Dec 1896, he walked w/ perfect calm to the firing line as though by his own choice, the only heroic figure in
that sordid scene." (9)
To the bigoted Spaniards in Spain & in the Philippines, Rizal was the most intelligent, most courageous,and
most dangerous enemy of the reactionaries & the tyrants; therefore he should be shot publicly to serve as an
example and a warning to those of his kind. This was the reason why Rizal, after a brief mock trial, was sentenced to
death & made to face the firing squad at Bagumbayan Field, now Luneta, in the early morning of 30 Dec 1896.
And for the 3rd & the last time, we repeat the question: Why is Rizal the greatest Filipino hero that ever
lived? Because "he is a man honored after death by public worship, because of exceptional service to
mankind". We can say that even before his execution, Rizal was the already acclaimed by both Filipinos
& foreigners as the foremost leader of his people". Writing from Barcelona to the Great Malayan on 10 Mar 1889, M.
H. del Pilar said: "Rizal no tiene aun derecho a morir: su nombre constituye la mas pura e immaculada bandera de
aspirationes y Plaridel los suyos no son otra causa ma que immaculada unos voluntarios que militan bajo esa
bandera."(10) Fernando Acevedo, who called Rizal his distinguido amigo, compañero y paisano", wrote the letter
from Zaragoza, Spain, on 25 Oct 1889: "I see in you the model Filipino; your application to study & you talents have
placed on a height which I revere and admire." (11) The Bicolano Dr. Tomas Arejola wrote Rizal in Madrid, 9 Feb
1891, saying: "Your moral influence over us is indisputable." (12) And Guillermo Puatu of Bulacan wrote this tribute
to Rizal, saying: "Vd. a quien se le puede (llamar) con razon, cabeza tutelary de los Filipinos, aunque la comparacion
parezca algo ridicula, porque posee la virtud la atraer consigo enconadas voluntades, zanjar las discordias y
enemistades