Journeying through Jose Rizal’s Life, Exile, and Death

You see, the Rizals were not really landowners. They were tenants of the Dominicans who owned most of the land in Calamba. According to the Rizals (the Dominicans have their own version of the story), the tenants started to complain about rent increases that did not consider whether the harvest for that season was good or not…

Rizal was not a radical man, but in 1891, he became a spokesman for these tenants whom he advised to trust in the justice and goodness of Mother Spain. The tenants did just that, and the Spanish governor-general, Valeriano Weyler (who became notorious as the Butcher of Cuba), sent soldiers to bodily evict the hardheaded tenants from Calamba…It was a major upheaval for the people of Calamba and also Rizal, who became a marked man not only for his anti-clerical novel, Noli me tangere, but also for being in the center of a major agrarian dispute. –Rizal’s New Calamba in Sabah

Sometimes I cannot make sense of Rizal. Was he happy in Dapitan? In 1893, he wrote Blumentritt and described a typical day:

“I have three houses: a square house, a six-sided house, and an eight-sided house. My mother, my sister Trinidad, and a nephew and I live in the square house; my students—boys who I am teaching math, Spanish and English—and a patient [in the six-sided house]. My chickens live in the six-sided house. From my house, I can hear the murmur of a crystalline rivulet that drops from high rocks. I can see the shore, the sea where I have two small boats or barotos, as they are called here. I have many fruit trees: mangoes, lanzones, guyabanos, batuno, langka, etc. I have rabbits, dogs, cats, etc.

I get up early, at 5 in the morning inspect my fields, feed the chickens, wake up my farm-hands and get them to work. At half past 7, we have breakfast consisting of tea, pastries, cheese, sweets, etc. Then, I hold clinic examining patients and training the poor patients who come to see me. I dress and go to town in my baroto to visit my patients there. I return at noon and have lunch that has been prepared for me. Afterwards I teach the boys until 4 and spend the rest of the afternoon in the fields. At night, I read and study.”

Although Rizal did not live behind bars, Dapitan was not London, Paris, New York or Madrid. Dapitan was literally the boondocks. —Rizal’s poetry in Dapitan

The slow walk to Bagumbayan began at 6:30 a.m. It was a cool, clear morning and Rizal was dressed, appropriately, in black. Black coat, black pants and a black cravat emphasized by his white shirt and waistcoat. He was tied elbow to elbow, but he proudly held up his head, crowned with the signature chistera or bowler hat made famous by Charlie Chaplin…

He made one last request that the soldiers spare his precious head and shoot him in the back toward the heart. When the captain agreed, Rizal shook the hand of Taviel de Andrade and thanked him for the vain effort of defending him.

Meanwhile, a curious Spanish military doctor came and felt Rizal’s pulse and was surprised to find it regular and normal. The Jesuits were the last to leave the condemned man. They raised a crucifix to Rizal’s face and lips, but he turned his head away and silently prepared for death.

As the captain raised his saber in the air, he ordered his men to be ready and shouted, Preparen! The order to aim the rifles followed: Apunten!

Then, in split second before the captain’s saber was brought down with the order to fire Fuego!, Rizal shouted the two last words of Christ, Conssumatum est! (it is done). The shots rang out, the bullets hit their mark and Rizal made that carefully choreographed twist he practiced years before that would make him fall face-up on the ground. –“Oh, what a beautiful morning!”