More Questions than Answers about Rizal

There were whispers. There were mild protestations. There was a cacophony of doubt. Could it be? Was the greatest national hero of the Philippines really not the person we have assumed all along that he was?

What constitutes a national hero? Soldiers who go into battle and exhibit exemplary courage while under fire eventually receive a hero's welcome. People who are imprisoned by the enemy and undergo torture are received home as returning heroes.

What of Rizal? He was a true national hero. Not only did he give up his life for his country, he devoted every hour of every day to the pursuit of his dream of a new and improved Las Islas Filipinas.

Being a genius and being a hero are of course two different things. One can be a genius and not be a hero. John Stuart Mill had an IQ of 192, but he is not considered a hero of England. Gari Kasparov is perhaps the greatest chess player of all time, but he is not considered a Russian hero. Bobby Fisher was a chess genius, but he was an anti-hero.

Rizal's heroism is separate from his genius. Genius is genius, heroism is reserved for those who either devote or sacrifice their lives for the benefit of their country.

Rizal did exactly that.

The bone of contention is not whether Rizal was a hero, but whether Rizal was a hero of the Philippine independence movement from Spain.

"I die, just when I see the dawn breaks," he wrote in his La Ultima Adios (The Last Farewell). Many have assumed that the dawn Rizal visualized was an independent Philippines. The reality was, he felt his death would accelerate the process of reforms in the Philippines, which would continue as a colony of Spain. Rizal dedicated his life and writings to much-needed reforms. He was not thinking of Las Islas Filipinas breaking away from Spain. He did not trust his fellow Filipinos to effectively run a government.

When we celebrate Independence Day, do we think of Rizal? Or do we think of Bonifacio, or Aguinaldo?

I belong to the camp that believes Philippine Independence was the handiwork of Bonifaco and Aguinaldo, not of Rizal. In fact, Rizal opposed the revolution. His two books, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo argued against the revolution.

Every revolution has its George Washington, and it was not Rizal. It was Bonifacio. It was Aguinaldo.

Rizal clearly ranks as one of the greatest national heroes of the Philippines, and was hands-down the most talented and most prolific multi-talented genius of the modern era. But he was not the father of the Filipino nation.

(Note: I am using the term "Filipino nation" rather loosely. To my mind, the term Filipino nation is fictive, that there is really no single Filipino nation but rather a collection of many nations that is trying to form a true union.)

Rizal's "on one hand, yet on the other hand" paralysis by analysis approach to the Philippine revolution made him a liability to the revolution rather than an asset.

"When shall we be stronger?" asked Patrick Henry of the President of the Virginia legislature and his fellow legislators in 1775. "Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we shall be totally disarmed and and every British soldier shall be stationed in every house?" Finally, Henry's famous words: "Give me liberty or give me death."

Patrick Henry had clarity of purpose. George Washington had clarity of mission: to drive the rascal red shirts out of the country, drowning in the Atlantic.

The father of nearly every nation on earth is usually a simple man - a man of barely above-average intelligence, but with the heart of a lion and whose genius is in fighting and leading his brethren in the field of battle.

Mao Tse Tung, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi and his peaceful non-cooperation, Washington, Robespiere and his "liberty, equality and fraternity" battle cry.

These were and are all above-average men intellectually but not geniuses, yet they are giants in history. Their genius is in their ability to inspire their countrymen to rise up in revolt either through violence or through peaceful non-cooperation.

The fact that none of them were ophthalmologists or writers or poets or polyglots or artists mattered little. It was as though they were put on earth at the right time in history to give voice and meaning to people's struggles and to lead people out of their misery and into eventual triumph.

For one brief moment, Bonifacio was such a man. But for the Americans' duplicity, Aguinaldo would have been such a man.

The historical forces that were crafting the known world at the turn of the 20th century conspired to prevent either Bonifacio or Aguinaldo from holding that ticker-tape parade down Escolta street in Manila. But they were the closest thing to true heroes of the independence movement who actually made the symbolic claim to independence from Spain by parading down the country's premier thoroughfare.

As we reflect on the birth anniversary of Rizal, born June 19, 1861, let us remember him for his heroism, for his multitude of talents, for the huge figure he casts over the history of the Philippines. Let us remember him as the Thomas Paine of the revolutionary movement.

Thomas Paine, through his writings, gave voice to the frustrations of the emerging American nation. His incisive writings, notably Common Sense, fueled thoughts of an American revolution, but it is General Washington who actually went into the field of battle that is the acknowledged father of the American revolution.

Let us give Rizal his due, but not the recognition that others clearly deserve more. Andres Bonifacio and Emilio Aguinaldo were the true fathers of the Philippine revolution against Spain.

To be sure, Rizal had valid reasons for opposing a revolution, his main one being that the Filipinos were not ready as a people for self-rule and consequently, the tyrants of his time would probably be replaced by tyrants of the future. Rizal probably had a vision of Cuba, of China under Mao Tse Tung, of Russia after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.

The speciousness in this thinking is that after a few initial decades of tyranny by the revolutionary bosses, the countries freed from slavery by foreign powers eventually get their act together and become a much stronger nation.

Rizal apparently found tolerable the Spanish policy of deliberately keeping most of his fellow Indios uneducated and ignorant, thereby assuring their continued subservience to the Spanish crown.

A new nation was being formed by the revolutionaries, and Rizal was a bystander. Rizal was many things, but he was not a Founding Father of the Philippine nation. Bonifacio and Aguinaldo were.