DOCTOR WHO?
(an article written by Mr. Stuart Heaver, A freelance writer based in Hong Kong and travelling extensively across Asia writing for leading news, travel and commercial online and print media.)
Polymath, revolutionary and martyr, Jose Rival developed a taste for
freedom in permissive 19th-century Hong Kong. As 2011 marks the
150th anniversary of his birth, Stuart Heaver asks why the founding
father of the Philippines is not better remembered here.
This year marks the 150th anniversary
of the birth of arguably the most
important revolutionary thinker
of his generation, and perhaps the
most revered national hero in
Southeast Asia. But despite his
close connections with Hong Kong,
you will struggle to find any mention here of the individual described
by his biographer as “one of the greatest men Asia has ever produced”.
Dr Jose Rizal was an exceptional linguist, philosopher, scientist,
artist, writer, doctor and nationalist. The polymath inspired a revolution
in his native Philippines and was executed as a traitor by firing squad in 1896, aged just 35.
His fascinating story is entwined with the history of colonial Spain,
the Philippines and Hong Kong. Rizal lived in Hong Kong in 1891 and 1892 and established a successful medical practice through which the
“Spanish doctor”, as he was known, raised funds for the nationalist
cause in the Philippines by working as an ophthalmic surgeon.
As shoppers and office workers make their way down D’Aguilar
Street towards the junction with Queen’s Road Central, few bother to
glance up to their left and see the modest oval commemorative plaque
to this Asian hero. Just above the plaque, you can see young people
sipping cappuccino in the first-floor coffee shop. This is where Rizal
would have operated on cataracts and other eye defects.
Despite these small clues to his close affiliation with Hong Kong, you
will not find much evidence of his 150th anniversary. Indeed, few outside
the Philippines seem to know much about him at all. For some reason,
the name Rizal does not spring to the lips in the same way as those of
better-known revolutionary heroes, such as Gandhi and Sun Yat-sen.
Paul Harrison, a conservator, historian and broadcaster, became
“slightly obsessed” with Rizal while preparing a local history series for
broadcast on RTHK, as part of the Naked Lunch radio programme two
years ago. Harrison thought that the nine commemorative plaques on
buildings across Hong Kong might prove a valuable source of material
for his series and discovered that two of these nine plaques are
dedicated to one man: Rizal.
“I was amazed and slightly ashamed that I was a professional historian
and not aware of Rizal at all,” says Harrison, who now advises the
Rizal museum in Manila.
Harrison points out the second of the Rizal plaques, located on
Rednaxela Terrace, just a few paces from the Mid-Levels escalator. Here,
Rizal lived with his family in a house in the middle of Hong Kong’s
December 11, 2011 Post Magazine 45
Portuguese community that was almost certainly provided by his friend
and loyal supporter Jose Pedro Braga, who had prospered in Hong Kong
and later became the first Portuguese member of the Legislative Council.
“I was immediately impressed by his story as the national hero and
founding father of the Philippines,” Harrison says. “But it is the fact that
this brilliant young polymath was executed by Spain just for his literary
work that makes him striking as a historical figure.”
Harrison could find no copies of Rizal’s two political novels: Noli
Me Tangere (“touch me not”) and El Filibusterismo (“the filibustering”),
anywhere locally. He did, however, manage to obtain a copy of Rizal’s
biography, by Austin Coates and compiled while Coates was serving as
assistant colonial secretary in Hong Kong, from 1949 to 1956.
The biography was first published in 1968, a time when revolutionary
heroes were very much in vogue. But while young people in the 1960s
might have been wearing T-shirts emblazoned with Che Guevara or
Karl Marx, Rizal never achieved this international iconic status.
Rizal was born on June 19, 1861, the seventh of 11 children and second
son of a distinguished and educated Philippine family of Calamba, south
of Manila. At the time of Rizal’s youth, Spain, and in particular, the
friars of the Roman Catholic Church, had dominated the Philippines
for more than three centuries. Filipinos were confined to the dark
ages, discouraged from advancing themselves and too often considered
nothing more than ignorant “Indios” by their colonial rulers. Rizal
witnessed countless casual beatings, with members of his own family
falling victim to frequent acts of injustice.
With support from his older brother, Paciano, Rizal completed his
university education in Madrid, Spain, and travelled extensively across
Europe on two occasions. Rizal obtained outstanding results in medicine
and philosophy, mobilised a Philippine intellectual movement in
Spain, wrote his first political novel and became fluent in six European
languages. He studied medicine with the finest eye-surgeons in
Heidelberg, Germany, and Paris, France, and studied at the British
Museum in London. Rival was welcomed by Europe’s leadings
intellectuals in the fields of classics, anthropology, medicine and art.
“It is an astonishing feat in itself that a young man in his 20s, from
a country many had not even heard of, could be received in such a way,”
Harrison says.
Rizal was a man of great integrity, always elegantly dressed and
with perfect manners. Almost everyone he met was touched by a sense
of greatness and felt compelled to write an account of their meeting.
“It is a shame that when so much has been written of Rizal, so little
seems to be read about him,” laments Harrison.
Rizal took on the role of walking product endorsement for his
native country. He was educated, intelligent, charming and thoughtful:
it was essential to his political cause that people inside and outside
the Philippines perceived that the Filipino was capable of shaping his
own destiny and was not dependent on the governance of Spain. It
was Rizal’s core political philosophy that, “there are no despots where
there are no slaves”.
If in Hong Kong one has to search hard for evidence of the man and
his anniversary, in Manila, it is difficult to step anywhere without being
made aware of the national legend. His statue and memorial dominates
Rizal Park, where it is guarded night and day by two armed sentries. A
huge sculpture commemorates his execution, on December 30, 1896.
The words of his most famous work, My Last Farewell, written on the
eve of his death and smuggled out to his family secreted inside an
alcohol lamp, are etched into a large polished granite slab.
The cell where he spent his final days, in Fort Santiago, is now a
museum, called the Rizal Shrine. Here there is more evidence of his
Hong Kong connection: one of his original business cards, with the
D’Aguilar Street and the Rednaxela Street addresses printed on it.
The wash stand and bed used at his practice in D’Aguilar Street are
also on display.
Zarah Escueta, curator of the Rizal Shrine, is familiar with Rizal’s
time in Hong Kong. “Rizal, who had thought to divorce himself from
politics, now found himself immersed in them again,” she says.
When Rizal arrived in Victoria Harbour, on the SS Melbourne, on
November 1, 1891, it was a chance to be reunited with his extended
family, who had escaped to the colony to avoid arrest and persecution.
He had just returned from his second period in Europe and published
the second of his major novels, El Filibusterismo, which Coates describes
as an “irresistible urge to revolution”.
The book made Rizal persona non grata with the establishment in
Manila and, according to writer, historian and Post Magazine columnist
Jason Wordie, Hong Kong was in many ways an obvious choice for a
political exile.
“Hong Kong in the early 1890s was very international; at least in
part because there had been 15 years of more or less uninterrupted
Post Magazine December 11, 2011
economic growth. There were close connections between Hong Kong
and the Philippines, partly driven by the Jardines’ sugar interests,”
Wordie says. “Freedom of expression was very much in evidence, as
long as it did not directly challenge government or overtly threaten
government relations with other powers.”
On February 1, 1892, Rizal wrote a letter to the Hong Kong Telegraph
explaining his opposition to the oppressive friars of the Spanish church:
“The conditions imposed by the Dominicans were so tyrannical and
humiliating that no man with a spark of self-respect and with any intelligent
understanding of right and wrong could submit himself to them
without reducing himself to base slavery.”
The Hong Kong Telegraph and its outspoken founder and editor,
Robert Fraser-Smith, always a flamboyant champion of the oppressed,
became an enthusiastic supporter of Rizal. It was said by some at the
time that Fraser-Smith was imprisoned so often as a result of a litany
of libel actions against the Telegraph that the newspaper was edited
from the cells of Victoria Jail.
Coates suggests Rizal must have been influenced by the heady anything-
is-possible attitude that is still endemic in Hong Kong. It was this
environment that helped Rizal settle on his revolutionary aim, which
“was now the total liberation of his country from Spain”.
In 1891, with Queen Victoria’s empire at the height of its powers and
with no other nation in Asia showing visible signs of breaking free of
their colonial masters, this was radical stuff indeed.
Radical maybe, but though Rizal was a skilled swordsman and a
crack shot with a pistol, he was no military man. Despite his revolutionary
words, there was no prospect of him leading any armed uprising
against Spain. Instead, Rizal was focused on setting up La Liga Filipina,
a society that would push its members, not only to value dignity and
courage and to defend their rights, but also to modernise agriculture,
promote commerce and make capital available for new enterprises.
“The founding of the Liga in his homeland was the reason Rizal
was determined to return to the Philippines,” Escueta says.
So, against all advice and almost certainly aware that he was signing
his own death warrant, Rizal departed Hong Kong for Manila on June
21, 1892, never to return. As he boarded the ship, the Spanish consul
cabled ahead to report that, “the rat is in the trap”.
This time he returned to Manila as the most famous man in the
Philippines and a huge threat to the established order. He was arrested
and exiled to Dapitan in the remote southern islands. It was the news
of his deportation that led Andres Bonifacio to form the Katipunan, the
secret society committed to armed revolution and the eviction of Spain
from the Philippines, which started the armed insurrection on August
30, 1896.
It was difficult for Rizal while in exile to have much influence on the
brewing insurrection being stirred up by Bonifacio and his followers.
He was the inspiration for the forthcoming violent revolution in the
Philippines, but probably had little detailed knowledge of it.
Rizal had always feared that without modern weapons, overseas
support and the involvement of the Philippines’ intelligentsia to form
an officer class, any armed revolution was doomed.
Rizal was not even in the Philippines during the early stages of the
revolution. His desperate request to serve as a medical officer for Spain
in the Cuban civil war, in order to escape exile, had finally been granted.
He was on board a ship bound for Havana, only to be arrested on the
ship’s arrival in Barcelona and returned to Manila to stand trial.
At 7am on December 30, 1896, Rizal was executed for inspiring a
revolution that he had played no physical part in. The prosecutor
accused Rizal of being the “soul of the rebellion”. It was his presence,
words and ideas that had made a mighty imperial power so fearful that
they felt the need to kill him.
As Harrison puts it, “Rizal was the freedom fighter who never
actually fought.”
Rizal despised the prospect of lying face down in the dirt, having
been shot in the back as a traitor. In his final act of heroism, after being
shot by the firing squad, he contorted his body to land on the earth
facing the sky above him.
At the time, his execution made headlines around the world and
inspired an armed revolution that eventually led to Philippine independence.
The poem smuggled from his cell in the lamp was first published
in Hong Kong by his great friend Braga, and has been translated into
more than 70 languages.
“Why is he not better known?” Harrison muses. “It’s certainly an
interesting enough story. It had to be an interesting story, to be broadcast
at lunchtime in between the rock ’n’ roll [on RTHK].”
Given that Hong Kong is home to some 140,000 Filipinos, you would
imagine “Asia’s World City” would be more enthusiastic about commemorating
one of Asia’s most outstanding individuals on the 150th anniversary
of his birth.
First and always a Filipino, Rizal was also a Hong Kong revolutionary
hero. It was during his short time here that his commitment to independence
and liberty hardened.
While Sun Yat-sen is honoured with a museum and a trail, and his
name may soon adorn the international airport at Chek Lap Kok, Rizal
remains largely ignored in Hong Kong.
To the Philippine nation, he is their founding father. For the rest of
us, where military intervention and violent oppression often seem to
dominate the news headlines, Rizal’s legacy is different.
His story is testimony to the fact that the pen really can be mightier
than the sword and that no one can kill an idea. Maybe for that reason
alone, more of us should glance up to our left when we walk down
D’Aguilar Street, and remember Dr Jose Rizal.
Post Magazine December 11, 2011
