Perpetuating Rizal’s legacy in South America

The Philippine embassy in Santiago, Chile, marked Rizal Day with a wreath-laying ceremony at the embassy’s Rizal monument. The same monument was inaugurated during the 161st birth anniversary of our national hero in June this year, and features the beautiful bust created by Czech sculptor Mr. Libor Piszlac.

Throughout my career in the Philippine foreign service, I have witnessed how Dr. Rizal’s legacy lives on across the globe, and how his indelible contributions to society remain palpable to this day.

I recently had a chance to attend a training on Philippine Overseas Voting Registration in Spain that was hosted by the Philippine consulate general in Barcelona. While visiting the consulate, I was able to view its permanent exhibit on the Sto. Niño de Cebu, one of the most enduring cultural and religious links between the Philippines and Spain. I was also tempted to take up the offer of the consulate’s cultural officer for a tour of Barcelona landmarks that made indelible marks on Dr. Rizal. Regrettably, our tight training schedule did not permit us to take the tour. Needless to say, this tour, as well as the similar Rizal heritage tour in Madrid, would be at the top of my to-do list on my next visit to Spain.

During my posting in Australia, I came across the book entitled “Revolutionary Spirit” by John Nery. He related how freedom fighters in what is now Indonesia and Malaysia were inspired by Dr. Rizal, and that some of his works, including his two novels, “Noli Me Tangere” and “El Filibusterismo,” and his poem, “Mi Ultimo Adiós,” were translated into Malay and were widely shared to invigorate Indonesian nationalism. In fact, one of Indonesia’s most important poets, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, as well as former president Sukarno, were great admirers of Rizal.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is another ardent Rizal admirer, who stated in 2021 that Rizal is “one of the greatest Malayans, and a true Asian Renaissance Man.”

In Chile, we have the likes of Prof. Raul Thoms of the Universidad de Santiago de Chile, who is a self-confessed Rizalista, and who has extensively researched Dr. Rizal’s life and works, focusing on his links with Latin America. In his latest lecture on Dr. Rizal, he shared his research on the three heroic “Joses” who fought against Spain, including José Martí of Cuba and José Artigas of Uruguay, and their indelible impacts on the revolutionary movements of their respective countries.

I recently watched a 65-part series on Netflix on the life of Gen. Simón Bolívar, and I continue to be amazed by the level of familiarity and sense of kinship Filipinos can derive from the Latin American colonial experience and struggle for independence. It was not difficult to find parallelisms between Bolívar and Rizal, and to associate many aspects of the life and daily struggles of Bolívar with that of Rizal, from the mundane to the sublime.

The Philippine embassy remains committed to building on our shared values and common cultural heritage with Latin America to foment greater people-to-people interaction, and to deepen our bilateral relations with Chile, Peru, and Ecuador across all levels of our bilateral relations, including in the political and economic spheres.

The perpetuation of Dr. Rizal’s legacy in South America, including the promotion of his works in Spanish to a Latin American audience, remains a key component of the cultural diplomacy program of the embassy.

Fortunately, there is no dearth of materials on Dr. Rizal. At our embassy library, I came across a reproduction of the book “Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas” by Antonio de Morga, which remains one of the most important sources of precolonial and early colonial history of the Philippines. But what made this edition special were the annotations by none other than Dr. Rizal, which reinforces our view of the national hero as a scholar and historian whose boundless patriotism manifested in his keen attention to detail, his dedication to historical accuracy, and his commitment to correct the misconceptions and biases of the author.

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Jim San Agustin is chargé d’affaires ad interim at the Philippine embassy in Santiago, Chile.