BalotSports.info

ONE hundred and thirteen years ago today, a gunshot disturbed the serenity of a lovely morning in a seaside park called Bagumbayan. The terrifying sound came from an execution squad, their muskets trained on Jose Rizal, who had been sentenced to death for leading an armed rebellion against Spain.

He was wrongly accused. He prescribed peaceful means to free his country from the yoke of Spanish oppression, though he was also prepared to take the sword and shed his blood should circumstances demand it.

Shortly thereafter, the hearts of his people proclaimed him their national hero. And in more modern times, he would be bestowed the singular title of First Filipino.

What is a hero?

The American social scientist Arthur Bernstein defines this noble figure as “an individual of elevated moral stature and superior ability who pursues his goal indefatigably in the face of a powerful antagonist. Because of his unbreached devotion to the good, no matter the opposition, a hero attains spiritual grandeur even if he fails to achieve practical victory.

“Notice then the four components of heroism: moral greatness, ability or prowess, action in the face of opposition, and triumph in at least a spiritual, if not a physical, form. Of these, the hero’s moral stature is unquestionably the most fundamental.”

Rizal’s unbreached devotion to the good led to the building of our nation out of a colonized race. In word and deed, he lashed at the injustice and oppression of Spanish authority. His moral stature was sealed by his “immaculate and incomparable death.” And though he saw the breaking of the dawn, he never basked in its full light, dying before the country gained independence.

Dying, however, is not a criterion of heroism in Bernstein’s definition. Heroism, moreover, is not a static concept; it is more like a spectrum with overlapping degrees and nuances in between.

Warrior Lapu-Lapu

The persona of the hero that is most familiar is the warrior, the brave one who wields the sword. Lapu-Lapu, the chief of Mactan, seared his image in our historical imagination as defender of the land, who in 1521 put an end to the first wave of Spanish conquest by slaying Ferdinand Magellan.

Lapu-Lapu’s brand of heroism would resurface again and again in the 300-year stretch of Spanish rule. Countless revolts, from sporadic shows of discontent to long-drawn resistance such as the epic 85-year defiance of Dagohoy, would relentlessly disturb the Spanish masters in their sleep.

These uprisings occurred during the period when the Philippines, to borrow the words of Bienvenido Lumbera, was but “the private archipelago of the Spaniards.” The conquistadores enriched themselves through the monopolistic Manila-Acapulco trade while the rest of the country survived on a subsistence economy.

Rise of the ‘ilustrado’

But when the Manila-Acapulco trade ended in 1812, leading to the opening of the country to foreign trade and the 1863 royal decree provided for a complete educational system in the country, the economic and intellectual foundations in the archipelago began to shift. They gave rise not only to a middle class but to an ilustrado elite who would no longer be afraid to speak out their minds against the oppressive colonial order.

In this world of change, another persona of the hero surfaced to mirror the temper of the age—the hero of the imagination.

Francisco Balagtas

Formerly derided as a race bereft of a viable culture until Spain arrived, the indios agraviados fought to gain respectability for their own traditions. Tagalog poetry epitomized this struggle. Francisco Balagtas (1788-1862) and his works were the quintessential story of the rise of native traditions to respectability.

The 19th century recognized Balagtas’s Florante at Laura as the best literary product by a native writer and banished the image of Tagalog poetry as good only for the “hills.” It established the legitimate artistry and reputation of the native tongue, retrieving the collective pride of the people in their own worth.

Hermano Pule

AT about the same time, during the first half of the nineteenth century (1830s-1840s), yet another persona of heroism emerged in Apolinario de la Cruz, more widely known as Hermano Pule.

Refused admission to a religious order because he was an indio, Hermano Pule established the Cofradia de San Jose. There was nothing unusual during those times about the Cofradia because religious movements of such nature were being promoted by the Jesuits as an instrument of Christian consolidation.

The pueblo-parish world of colonial subjection, with its economic impositions and abuses, prevented the natives from experiencing their traditional bonding relationship of cordiality and reciprocal assistance. Hermano Pule created in the Cofradia a parallel and opposite world centered around the cults of Catholic saints and characterized by insistence on inner purity, equanimity in the face of tribulations, and the practice and belief in the prophecies of charismatic leaders like Hermano Pule.

The phenomenal growth of Cofradia membership in Tayabas, Laguna, Batangas and Cavite eventually aroused the suspicion of the friars. Accused of engaging in heretical activities, witch-hunts of Cofradia leaders and members followed.

In October 1841, government forces attacked the Cofradia encampment in Mount San Cristobal in Tayabas province. Three to five hundred Cofradia members lay dead. Hermano Pule himself was captured and executed soon after, his head displayed in a cage atop a pole stuck along the road to Majayjay as a warning to others.

Although there was no evidence that Hermano Pule ever incited the Cofradia members to rise up against Spain, their so-called heretical activities were suppressed because the parallel world they were creating was upsetting the traditional relationship between the friar-curate and his Indio parishioners—that of the superior to the inferior. Clearly, these have “subversive” implications for the settled order of colonial rule.

Hermano Pule offered the persona of the hero of the moral compass with his insistence on inner purity as the foundation of liberation from bondage, anchoring a similar insistence on inner transformation as the condition of revolution 50 years later.

Youth of 1872

The personas of the hero from Lapu-Lapu, Balagtas and Hermano Pule would find convergence in the generation of 1872. Using the sword, the pen and the moral compass, the youth of 1872 would emerge as the finest expression of the amalgamated face of the hero in our country’s history.

At the vanguard were Marcelo del Pilar and Graciano Lopez-Jaena. Their sharp pens poked fun at friar hypocrisy and exposed their abuses. Andres Bonifacio, on the other hand, proclaimed in prose and poetry that Spain was an uncaring stepmother and counseled the people to reach for the sword.

But it was Jose Rizal who contoured, with the greatest clarity, the heroes of the sword, the pen and the moral compass into the persona of the hero as Filipino. Within a short lifetime, his prodigious mind laid out not only the philosophical foundations of nationhood but the complete cartography of his people’s story.

His Noli Me Tangere showed the people their miserable present, the Morga annotations demonstrated the richness and liveliness of their precolonial past, and Filipinas Dentro de Cien Años boldly predicted their future.

Having shown them their entire story, Rizal then founded La Liga Filipina, giving his people not only a roadmap to nationhood but a social blueprint for its development. He was preparing them for the sacrifices and demands of the freedom they sought. And then, he gave them wise counsel and fair warning—they would win freedom only and ultimately by deserving it.

As proof that he was ready to die for the nation he was founding, Rizal offered the cup of his moral compass. The gunshot that disturbed the lovely morning in the seaside park on December 30, 1896, turned out to be the sweet distillate of the long and bitter struggles that made the birth of the Filipino nation and the rise of the Filipino hero both inevitable and irreversible.

Forerunner of freedom movement

Rizal’s generation exploded a galaxy of heroic figures that could easily be said as the collective expression of the spirit of the nation at its best. It was this generation of Filipinos who first conceived the idea of independent nationhood as a viable alternative to colonialism.

They were also the first to give flesh to that ideal by tearing their cedula in August 1896, declaring independence in June 1898 and establishing the Malolos Republic in January 1899, making the Filipinos the forerunner of the freedom movement that changed the politics of Asia and led to where we are today.

Rizal, Bonifacio, Mabini and Aguinaldo

Foremost among this generation were Rizal, Bonifacio, Apolinario Mabini and Emilio Aguinaldo.

Rizal, Bonifacio and Mabini not only wanted an independent nation-state; they had a moral vision for it.

Rizal wrote: “I have always loved my country and wished for [both] her moral and material development.”

Likewise, Bonifacio fought not only to end Spanish rule but to build a nation “na may puri at kabanalan.”

And Mabini in his manifesto, True Decalogue, wrote down the moral basis to unite Filipinos into a community marked by virtue.

Aguinaldo, though not as cerebral as Rizal, Bonifacio and Mabini, was also a patriot. He gave the country its flag, anthem and government. A more kinetic man, he met the enemy face to face, leading his rag-tag army of voluntarios, armed only with feeble weapons, to overthrow an imperial power. With the battle won, he institutionalized freedom by building the foundations of the nation-state.

In this sense, Rizal, Bonifacio, Mabini and Aguinaldo are not antithetical ideologists; they are complimentary thinkers. And while they, individually, have their contributions, as well as lapses, in the making of the nation and the Filipino, the persona of the hero they project is a collective persona that has integrated the demands of moral stature, ability, unbreached devotion to the larger cause in the face of unrelenting opposition, and triumph in both the spiritual and physical form—the marks of the hero we delineated earlier.

In commemorating the martyrdom of Jose Rizal today, we are, therefore, essentially affirming that our race possesses the spirit necessary to move this country forward. The important thing is rising selflessly and individually to the moment. In that instant, our separate actions are encompassed and enlarged into a collective push for national deliverance.

Source: BusinessMirror.com.ph