Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot - Austin Craig
When he was four the mystery of life's ending had been brought home to
him by the death of a favorite little sister, and he shed the first
tears of real sorrow, for until then he had only wept as children do
when disappointed in getting their own way. It was the first of many
griefs, but he quickly realized that life is a constant struggle and
he learned to meet disappointments and sorrows with the tears in the
heart and a smile on the lips, as he once advised a nephew to do.
At seven Jose made his first real journey; the family went to Antipolo
with the host of pilgrims who in May visit the mountain shrine of Our
Lady of Peace and Safe Travel. In the early Spanish days in Mexico
she was the special patroness of voyages to America, especially while
the galleon trade lasted; the statue was brought to Antipolo in 1672.
A print of the Virgin, a souvenir of this pilgrimage, was, according
to the custom of those times, pasted inside Jose's wooden chest when
he left home for school; later on it was preserved in an album and
went with him in all his travels. Afterwards it faced Bougereau's
splendid conception of the Christ-mother, as one who had herself
thus suffered, consoling another mother grieving over the loss of a
son. Many years afterwards Doctor Rizal was charged with having fallen
away from religion, but he seems really rather to have experienced a
deepening of the religious spirit which made the essentials of charity
and kindness more important in his eyes than forms and ceremonies.
Yet Rizal practiced those forms prescribed for the individual even
when debarred from church privileges. The lad doubtless got his
idea of distinguishing between the sign and the substance from a
well-worn book of explanations of the church ritual and symbolism
"intended for the use of parish priests." It was found in his library,
with Mrs. Rizal's name on the flyleaf. Much did he owe his mother,
and his grateful recognition appears in his appreciative portrayal
of maternal affection in his novels.
His parents were both religious, but in a different way. The father's
religion was manifested in his charities; he used to keep on hand
a fund, of which his wife had no account, for contributions to the
necessitous and loans to the irresponsible. Mrs. Rizal attended to
the business affairs and was more careful in her handling of money,
though quite as charitably disposed. Her early training in Santa
Rosa had taught her the habit of frequent prayer and she began early
in the morning and continued till late in the evening, with frequent
attendance in the church. Mr. Rizal did not forget his church duties,
but was far from being so assiduous in his practice of them, and the
discussions in the home frequently turned on the comparative value of
words and deeds, discussions that were often given a humorous twist
by the husband when he contrasted his wife's liberality in prayers
with her more careful dispensing of money aid.
Not many homes in Kalamba were so well posted on events of the outside
world, and the children constantly heard discussions of questions
which other households either ignored or treated rather reservedly, for
espionage was rampant even then in the Islands. Mrs. Rizal's literary
training had given her an acquaintance with the better Spanish writers
which benefited her children; she told them the classic tales in style
adapted to their childish comprehension, so that when they grew older
they found that many noted authors were old acquaintances. The Bible,
too, played a large part in the home. Mrs. Rizal's copy was a Spanish
translation of the Latin Vulgate, the version authorized by her Church
but not common in the Islands then. Rizal's frequent references to
Biblical personages and incidents are not paralleled in the writings
of any contemporary Filipino author.
The frequent visitors to their home, the church, civil and military
authorities, who found the spacious Rizal mansion a convenient resting
place on their way to the health resort at Los Banos, brought something
of the city, and a something not found by many residents even there, to
the people of this village household. Oftentimes the house was filled,
and the family would not turn away a guest of less rank for the sake of
one of higher distinction, though that unsocial practice was frequently
followed by persons who forgot their self-respect in toadying to rank.
Little Jose did not know Spanish very well, so far as conversational
usage was concerned, but his mother tried to impress on him the beauty
of the Spanish poets and encouraged him in essays at rhyming which
finally grew into quite respectable poetical compositions. One of
these was a drama in Tagalog which so pleased a municipal captain of
the neighboring village of Paete, who happened to hear it while on
a visit to Kalamba, that the youthful author was paid two pesos for
the production. This was as much money as a field laborer in those
days would have earned in half a month; although the family did not
need the coin, the incident impressed them with the desirability of
cultivating the boy's talent.
Jose was nine years old when he was sent to study in Binan. His master
there, Justiniano Aquino Cruz, was of the old school and Rizal has left
a record of some of his maxims, such as "Spare the rod and spoil the
child," "The letter enters with blood," and other similar indications
of his heroic treatment of the unfortunates under his care. However,
if he was a strict disciplinarian, Master Justiniano was also a
conscientious instructor, and the boy had been only a few months
under his care when the pupil was told that he knew as much as his
master, and had better go to Manila to school. Truthful Jose repeated
this conversation without the modification which modesty might have
suggested, and his father responded rather vigorously to the idea
and it was intimated that in the father's childhood pupils were not
accustomed to say that they knew as much as their teachers. However,
Master Justiniano corroborated the child's statement, so that
preparations for Jose's going to Manila began to be made. This was
in the Christmas vacation of 1871.
Binan had been a valuable experience for young Rizal. There he had
met a host of relatives and from them heard much of the past of his
father's family. His maternal grandfather's great house was there, now
inhabited by his mother's half-brother, a most interesting personage.
This uncle, Jose Alberto, had been educated in British India, spending
eleven years in a Calcutta missionary school. This was the result of
an acquaintance which his father had made with an English naval officer
who visited the Philippines about 1820, the author of "An Englishman's
Visit to the Philippines." Lorenzo Alberto, the grandfather, himself
spoke English and had English associations. He had also liberal ideas
and preferred the system under which the Philippines were represented
in the Cortes and were treated not as a colony but as part of the
homeland and its people were considered Spaniards.
The great Binan bridge had been built under Lorenzo Alberto's
supervision, and for services to the Spanish nation during the
expedition to Cochin-China--probably liberal contributions of money--he
had been granted the title of Knight of the American Order of Isabel
the Catholic, but by the time this recognition reached him he had died,
and the patent was made out to his son.
An episode well known in the village--its chief event, if one might
judge from the conversation of the inhabitants--was a visit which
a governor of Hongkong had made there when he was a guest in the
home of Alberto. Many were the tales told of this distinguished
Englishman, who was Sir John Bowring, the notable polyglot and
translator into English of poetry in practically every one of the
dialects of Europe. His achievements along this line had put him
second or third among the linguists of the century. He was also
interested in history, and mentioned in his Binan visit that the
Hakluyt Society, of which he was a Director, was then preparing to
publish an exceedingly interesting account of the early Philippines
that did more justice to its inhabitants than the regular Spanish
historians. Here Rizal first heard of Morga, the historian, whose
book he in after years made accessible to his countrymen. A desire
to know other languages than his own also possessed him and he was
eager to rival the achievements of Sir John Bowring.
In his book entitled "A Visit to the Philippine Islands," which was
translated into Spanish by Mr. Jose del Pan, a liberal editor of
Manila, Sir John Bowring gives the following account of his visit to
Rizal's uncle:
"We reached Binan before sunset .... First we passed between
files of youths, then of maidens; and through a triumphal
arch we reached the handsome dwelling of a rich mestizo, whom
we found decorated with a Spanish order, which had been granted
to his father before him. He spoke English, having been educated
at Calcutta, and his house--a very large one--gave abundant
evidence that he had not studied in vain the arts of domestic
civilization. The furniture, the beds, the table, the cookery, were
all in good taste, and the obvious sincerity of the kind reception
added to its agreeableness. Great crowds were gathered together
in the square which fronts the house of Don Jose Alberto."
The Philippines had just had a liberal governor, De la Torte, but even
during this period of apparent liberalness there existed a confidential
government order directing that all letters from Filipinos suspected
of progressive ideas were to be opened in the post. This violation
of the mails furnished the list of those who later suffered in the
convenient insurrection of '72.
An agrarian trouble, the old disagreement between landlords and
tenants, had culminated in an active outbreak which the government
was unable to put down, and so it made terms by which, among other
things, the leader of the insurrection was established as chief
of a new civil guard for the purpose of keeping order. Here again
was another preparation for '72, for at that time the agreement
was forgotten and the officer suffered punishment, in spite of the
immunity he had been promised.
Religious troubles, too, were rife. The Jesuits had returned from
exile shortly before, and were restricted to teaching work in those
parishes in the missionary district where collections were few and
danger was great. To make room for those whom they displaced the better
parishes in the more thickly settled regions were taken from Filipino
priests and turned over to members of the religious Orders. Naturally
there was discontent. A confidential communication from the secular
archbishop, Doctor Martinez, shows that he considered the Filipinos had
ground for complaint, for he states that if the Filipinos were under a
non-Catholic government like that of England they would receive fairer
treatment than they were getting from their Spanish co-religionaries,
and warns the home government that trouble will inevitably result if
the discrimination against the natives of the country is continued.
The Jesuit method of education in their newly established "Ateneo
Municipal" was a change from that in the former schools. It treated the
Filipino as a Spaniard and made no distinctions between the races in
the school dormitory. In the older institutions of Manila the Spanish
students lived in the Spanish way and spoke their own language, but
Filipinos were required to talk Latin, sleep on floor mats and eat
with their hands from low tables. These Filipino customs obtained in
the hamlets, but did not appeal to city lads who had become used to
Spanish ways in their own homes and objected to departing from them in
school. The disaffection thus created was among the educated class,
who were best fitted to be leaders of their people in any dangerous
insurrection against the government.
However, a change had to take place to meet the Jesuit competition,
and in the rearrangement Filipino professors were given a larger
share in the management of the schools. Notable among these was
Father Burgos. He had earned his doctor's degree in two separate
courses, was among the best educated in the capital and by far the
most public-spirited and valiant of the Filipino priests.
He enlisted the interest of many of the older Filipino clergy and
through their contributions subsidized a paper, El Eco Filipino,
which spoke from the Filipino standpoint and answered the reflections
which were the stock in trade of the conservative organ, for the
reactionaries had an abusive journal just as they had had in 1821
and were to have in the later days.
Such were the conditions when Jose Rizal got ready to leave home for
school in Manila, a departure which was delayed by the misfortunes of
his mother. His only, and elder, brother, Paciano, had been a student
in San Jose College in Manila for some years, and had regularly failed
in passing his examinations because of his outspokenness against
the evils of the country. Paciano was a great favorite with Doctor
Burgos, in whose home he lived and for whom he acted as messenger
and go-between in the delicate negotiations of the propaganda which
the doctor was carrying on.
In February of '72 all the dreams of a brighter and freer Philippines
were crushed out in that enormous injustice which made the mutiny of a
few soldiers and arsenal employes in Cavite the excuse for deporting,
imprisoning, and even shooting those whose correspondence, opened
during the previous year, had shown them to be discontented with the
backward conditions in the Philippines.
Doctor Burgos, just as he had been nominated to a higher post in the
Church, was the chief victim. Father Gomez, an old man, noted for
charity, was another, and the third was Father Zamora. A reference
in a letter of his to "powder," which was his way of saying money,
was distorted into a dangerous significance, in spite of the fact
that the letter was merely an invitation to a gambling game. The
trial was a farce, the informer was garroted just when he was on
the point of complaining that he was not receiving the pardon and
payment which he had been promised for his services in convicting
the others. The whole affair had an ugly look, and the way it was
hushed up did not add to the confidence of the people in the justice
of the proceedings. The Islands were then placed under military law
and remained so for many years.
Father Burgos's dying advice to Filipinos was for them to be educated
abroad, preferably outside of Spain, but if they could do no better,
at least go to the Peninsula. He urged that through education only
could progress be hoped for. In one of his speeches he had warned the
Spanish government that continued oppressive measures would drive the
Filipinos from their allegiance and make them wish to become subjects
of a freer power, suggesting England, whose possessions surrounded
the Islands.
Doctor Burgos's idea of England as a hope for the Philippines was
borne out by the interest which the British newspapers of Hongkong
took in Philippine affairs. They gave accounts of the troubles and
picked flaws in the garbled reports which the officials sent abroad.
Some zealous but unthinking reactionary at this time conceived the idea
of publishing a book somewhat similar to that which had been gotten
out against the Constitution of Cadiz. "Captain Juan" was its name;
it was in catechism form, and told of an old municipal captain who
deserved to be honored because he was so submissively subservient to
all constituted authority. He tries to distinguish between different
kinds of liberty, and the especial attention which he devotes to
America shows how live a topic the great republic was at that time in
the Islands. This interest is explained by the fact that an American
company had just then received a grant of the northern part of Borneo,
later British North Borneo, for a trading company. It was believed that
the United States had designs on the Archipelago because of treaties
which had been negotiated with the Sultan of Sulu and certain American
commercial interests in the Far East, which were then rather important.
Americans, too, had become known in the Philippines through a soldier
of fortune who had helped out the Chinese government in suppressing
the rebellion in the neighborhood of Shanghai. "General" F. T. Ward,
from Massachusetts, organized an army of deserters from European ships,
but their lack of discipline made them undesirable soldiers, and so
he disbanded the force. He then gathered a regiment of Manila men,
as the Filipinos usually found as quartermasters on all ships sailing
in the East were then called. With the aid of some other Americans
these troops were disciplined and drilled into such efficiency that the
men came to have the title among the Chinese of the "Ever-Victorious"
army, because of the almost unbroken series of successes which they
had experienced. A partial explanation, possibly, of their fighting
so well is that they were paid only when they won.
The high praise given the Filipinos at this time was in contrast to the
disparagement made of their efforts in Indo-China, where in reality
they had done the fighting rather than their Spanish officers. When
a Spaniard in the Philippines quoted of the Filipino their customary
saying, "Poor soldier, worse sacristan," the Filipinos dared make
no open reply, but they consoled themselves with remembering the
flattering comments of "General" Ward and the favorable opinion of
Archbishop Martinez.
References to Filipino military capacity were banned by the censors and
the archbishop's communication had been confidential, but both became
known, for despotisms drive its victims to stealth and to methods
which would not be considered creditable under freer conditions.
CHAPTER V
Jagor's Prophecy
RIZAL'S first home in Manila was in a nipa house with Manuel
Hidalgo, later to be his brother-in-law, in Calle Espeleta, a street
named for a former Filipino priest who had risen to be bishop and
governor-general. This spot is now marked with a tablet which gives
the date of his coming as the latter part of February, 1872.
Rizal's own recollections speak of June as being the date of the
formal beginning of his studies in Manila. First he went to San Juan
de Letran and took an examination in the Catechism. Then he went back
to Kalamba and in July passed into the Ateneo, possibly because of
the more favorable conditions under which the pupils were admitted,
receiving credit for work in arithmetic, which in the other school,
it is said, he would have had to restudy. This perhaps accounts for
the credit shown in the scholastic year 1871-72. Until his fourth
year Rizal was an externe, as those residing outside of the school
dormitory were then called. The Ateneo was very popular and so great
was the eagerness to enter it that the waiting list was long and two
or three years' delay was not at all uncommon.
There is a little uncertainty about this period; some writers have
gone so far as to give recollections of childhood incidents of which
Rizal was the hero while he lived in the house of Doctor Burgos,
but the family deny that he was ever in this home, and say that he
has been confused with his brother Paciano.
The greatest influence upon Rizal during this period was the sense of
Spanish judicial injustice in the legal persecutions of his mother,
who, though innocent, for two years was treated as a criminal and
held in prison.
Much of the story is not necessary for this narrative, but the mother's
troubles had their beginning in the attempted revenge of a lieutenant
of the Civil Guard, one of a body of Spaniards who were no credit
to the mother country and whom Rizal never lost opportunity in his
writings of painting in their true colors. This official had been in
the habit of having his horse fed at the Mercado home when he visited
their town from his station in Binan, but once there was a scarcity
of fodder and Mr. Mercado insisted that his own stock was entitled
to care before he could extend hospitality to strangers. This the
official bitterly resented. His opportunity for revenge soon came, and
was not overlooked. A disagreement between Jose Alberto, the mother's
brother in Binan, and his wife, also his cousin, to whom he had been
married when they were both quite young, led to sensational charges
which a discreet officer would have investigated and would assuredly
have then realized to be unfounded. Instead the lieutenant accepted
the most ridiculous statements, brought charges of attempted murder
against Alberto and his sister, Mrs. Rizal, and evidently figured
that he would be able to extort money from the rich man and gratify
his revenge at the same time.
Now comes a disgruntled judge, who had not received the attention at
the Mercado home which he thought his dignity demanded. Out of revenge
he ordered Mrs. Rizal to be conducted at once to the provincial prison,
not in the usual way by boat, but, to cause her greater annoyance,
afoot around the lake. It was a long journey from Kalamba to Santa
Cruz, and the first evening the guard and his prisoner came to
a village where there was a festival in progress. Mrs. Rizal was
well known and was welcomed in the home of one of the prominent
families. The festivities were at their height when the judge, who
had been on horseback and so had reached the town earlier, heard that
the prisoner, instead of being in the village calaboose, was a guest
of honor and apparently not suffering the annoyance to which he had
intended to subject her. He strode to the house, and, not content to
knock, broke in the door, splintered his cane on the poor constable's
head, and then exhausted himself beating the owner of the house.
These proceedings were revealed in a charge of prejudice which
Mrs. Rizal's lawyers urged against the judge who at the same time
was the one who decided the case and also the prosecutor. The Supreme
Court agreed that her contention was correct and directed that she be
discharged from custody. To this order the judge paid due respect and
ordered her release, but he said that the accusation of unfairness
against him was contempt of court, and gave her a longer sentence
under this charge than the previous one from which she had just been
absolved. After some delay the Supreme Court heard of this affair and
decided that the judge was right. But, because Mrs. Rizal had been
longer in prison awaiting trial than the sentence, they dated back
her imprisonment, and again ordered her release. Here the record
gets a little confused because it is concerned with a story that
her brother had sixteen thousand pesos concealed in his cell, and
everybody, from the Supreme Court down, seemed interested in trying
to locate the money.
While the officials were looking for his sack of gold, Alberto
gave a power of attorney to an overintelligent lawyer who worded
his authority so that it gave him the right to do everything
which his principal himself could have done "personally, legally
and ecclesiastically." From some source outside, but not from the
brother, the attorney heard that Mrs. Rizal had had money belonging
to Alberto, for in the extensive sugar-purchasing business which she
carried on she handled large sums and frequently borrowed as much as
five thousand pesos from this brother. Anxious to get his hands on
money, he instituted a charge of theft against her, under his power of
attorney and acting in the name of his principal. Mrs. Rizal's attorney
demurred to such a charge being made without the man who had lent the
money being at all consulted, and held that a power of attorney did
not warrant such an action. In time the intelligent Supreme Court
heard this case and decided that it should go to trial; but later,
when the attorney, acting for his principal, wanted to testify for him
under the power of attorney, they seem to have reached their limit,
for they disapproved of that proposal.
Anyone who cares to know just how ridiculous and inconsistent the
judicial system of the Philippines then was would do well to try to
unravel the mixed details of the half dozen charges, ranging from
cruelty through theft to murder, which were made against Mrs. Rizal
without a shadow of evidence. One case was trumped up as soon as
another was finished, and possibly the affair would have dragged on
till the end of the Spanish administration had not her little daughter
danced before the Governor-General once when he was traveling through
the country, won his approval, and when he asked what favor he could do
for her, presented a petition for her mother's release. In this way,
which recalls the customs of primitive nations, Mrs. Rizal finally
was enabled to return to her home.
Doctor Rizal tells us that it was then that he first began to lose
confidence in mankind. A story of a school companion, that when
Rizal recalled this incident the red came into his eyes, probably
has about the same foundation as the frequent stories of his weeping
with emotion upon other people's shoulders when advised of momentous
changes in his life. Doctor Rizal did not have these Spanish ways,
and the narrators are merely speaking of what other Spaniards would
have done, for self-restraint and freedom from exhibitions of emotion
were among his most prominent characteristics.