150,000 flowers for Dr. Jose Rizal and a tale of two statues

Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic makes heroes. — Benjamin Disraeli

Will the Philippines be able to achieve a feat worthy of the Guinness Book of World Recordson June 19, which is the sesquicentennial or 150th birth anniversary of National Hero Dr. Jose Rizal who was only 35 years old when he was unjustly executed by firing squad by the Spanish colonial regime for using his pen to expose the latter’s shameless corruption and moral degradation?

Dr. Juliet Horfilla Villegas, head of the Rizal Park or Luneta, told this writer: “Please help us invite the public through the many readers of The Philippine STAR that we plan for 150,000 people to each come and personally offer a flower at the Rizal monument starting 7 a.m. on June 19 as our tribute to him. If we do this fast and efficiently, it will take only four hours for 150,000 people to do this. We are also asking volunteers to assist us on that day and to register on site.”

Apart from this flowers tribute, let us honor Rizal’s memory by standing up against cynical corruption, Padre Damas-style hypocrisies or Doña Victorina-like nihilism in our society. Under the imperfect but nevertheless sincere and honest President Noynoy C. Aquino, the Philippines now has a golden opportunity to hopefully push systemic reforms to cleanse our politics, judiciary, police and military, bureaucracy and even the private sector of excessive corruption. Will we see reforms triumph, or do we have to wait another 150 years?

World’s only national hero who’s a writer: let us promote reading!

Another way to truly pay homage to Rizal is to promote reading as a national habit as well as to support teachers and writers, for our national hero was both a teacher and a writer. I believe Rizal is the only national hero in the world who is a writer and who was shot because they hated his two fearless books, but ironically we are a society that does not read. In Germany or China, the masses and the taxi drivers, they read. We need to encourage reading.

For 333 years, the Philippines was Spain’s farthest colony halfway around the globe so that not more than a few thousand Spaniards lived here at the height of their power, and the physically outnumbered Spaniards deliberately discouraged the teaching of the Spanish language and reading. Sadly, our many political leaders in past decades have also failed to correct this shortcoming of the Spanish colonial regime and reading as a national pastime has not been widely encouraged.

To honor the book lover and writer Dr. Jose Rizal, to push back the darkness of ignorance that weakens any political democracy, let us promote reading as a habit nationwide!

Anding Roces saved TWO novels, German pastor’s attic where Rizal wrote Noli

By the way, on June 3, the late Philippine STAR columnist, anti-Japanese war guerrilla, humorist, National Artist and former Education Secretary Alejandro “Anding” Roces was laid to rest at the Libingan Ng Mga Bayani. He was one of the best writers and statesmen of the Philippines. I remember Roces once told me his theory of how the proportion of entrepreneurial ethnic Chinese minorities in each ASEAN country has a direct positive impact on that nation’s socio-economic development.

Anding used to tell me that his late wife Irene Viola’s grandfather, Bulacan doctor and rice grower Maximo Viola, was the financier of Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere novel. The two ilustrado friends traveled in Europe together in the 19th century.

Fortuitously, in 2004 during a trip by the descendants of Maximo Viola to Germany, they were able to meet Dr. Fritz Hack-Ullmer, the cardiologist grandson of Protestant pastor Karl Ullmer. It was Pastor Ullmer who generously allowed Jose Rizal to stay in their attic free of charge for six months, and it was there that he wrote the last chapters of Noli Me Tangere.

Coincidentally, the Noli financier’s grandson-in-law and then Education Secretary Anding Roces in the 1960s played real-life James Bond by famously negotiating and retrieving the original manuscripts of Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo novels which were stolen by thieves.

Like his lifelong hero Rizal, the late Anding Roces believed in the power of the pen and of education to change our world for the better.

A Suggestion Becomes Two Rizal Monuments In Fort Santiago And China

Ipersonally admire Rizal even more because he was a talented writer who believed in the written word. Through an essay I wrote for the STAR’s Lifestyle section on April 12, 1999 entitled “Why China should build a Rizal monument” and other writings afterwards, this writer was able to help encourage the rise of two interesting Rizal monuments.

Not many people before knew much about our national hero’s Chinese lineage and the fact that he was a direct patrilineal great-great-grandson of the immigrant tycoon Domingo Lamco (Chinese name “Cua Yi Lam”) who was from Siongque Village in Jinjiang county (now a city), Fujian province of south China. This writer, with the help of my businessman uncle Manuel Chua — whose wife Felisa Lee Chua was my late dad’s fifth younger sister — was able to verify the genealogical roots of Rizal with Philippine and south China records.

We helped arrange three unforgettable trips of Rizal family descendants to the hero’s ancestral village where the local government had approved a project to build the world’s biggest Rizal Park outside the Philippines on five hectares of land. On the first two trips, my uncle Manuel Chua hosted the Rizal family members.

On the third trip for the groundbreaking of the Rizal Park in Fujian to be led by then President Joseph Estrada, the 56 Rizal clan members confirmed they wanted to attend the historic event. Taipan Lucio Tan told me he wanted to host them — from airfare via his Philippine Airlines to all travel expenses including five-star hotel accommodations. He and his brother-in-law Domingo Chua even arranged two air-conditioned tour buses, banquets and English-speaking tour guides.

Why two Rizal monuments from this writer’s suggestion? The original plan was for various Philippine philanthropists led by Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce & Industry, Inc. (FFCCCII) honorary president Lucio Tan and president John K. C. Ng to donate a life-sized bronze statue of the hero for the Rizal park in China. I had recommended the multi-awarded sculptor Juan Sajid Imao to do it, and he was commissioned by the donors.

Unfortunately it seemed that the local rural bureaucrats in the national hero’s hometown had pork barrel funds to spend, so they proceeded to construct an exact replica of Luneta’s 12-meter high Rizal monument but much bigger at 18.61 meters high — inspired by his birth year 1861. It is the world’s biggest Rizal monument. What was funny about their impressive version was the moreno-looking Chinese mestizo Rizal became a European mestizo who looked a bit like the actor Richard Gutierrez!

What happened to the Juan Sajid Imao bronze masterpiece of Rizal? Through the help of then Tourism Secretary Richard “Dick” Gordon, himself an Atenean who idolizes fellow Atenean Rizal, that statue was eventually installed at the Rizal Shrine in historic Fort Santiago inside Intramuros and it is now a favorite picture-taking spot for tourists.

150,000 flowers, eloquent speeches, tributes and grand monuments are great, but I believe the best way to honor the selfless heroism of Dr. Jose Rizal is for all of us to help reform the Philippines according to his lofty vision of a truly free, just, peaceful and progressive society.

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