Rizal from cradle to grave

Jose Rizal’s status as National Hero goes beyond history and into business, because his face (on the P1 coin, the basic unit of our currency) and his name have sold more than textbooks.

Just run your fingers down the last paper edition of the phone directory’s business volume and count the establishments and brand names under Rizal, Bonifacio, Mabini and Aguinaldo. You will find that Rizal trumps them all: Rizal Matches, Rizal Commercial and Banking Corp., Rizal Cement, Rizal Theater, Rizal Bicycles, etc.

In prewar times, there were many small cigarette brands that had Rizal’s name or face on the packs that encouraged rather than discouraged smoking and lung cancer. San Miguel used to have a Cerveza Rizal, long discontinued. We have Rizal from cradle to grave, since you can be born in a Rizal Hospital and die and lie in wake in a Funeraria Rizal.

This state of things does not sit well with the descendants of the other National Heroes. Apolinario Mabini IV, former curator of the Mabini Shrine in Nagtahan, once complained loudly that the relics of the Sublime Paralytic—his wheelchair, eye glasses, books, and manuscripts—were valued way below the relics of Rizal preserved in the National Library, National Museum and the Rizal shrines in Calamba, Dapitan and Fort Santiago.

“Why are Rizal’s things more expensive than Mabini’s things? They both gave their lives for the country,” he said.

We see this gap very clearly at an auction tomorrow where Rizal dominates. There is a 1996 BenCab drawing of Rizal writing the “Mi Ultimo Adios” with a low estimate of P800,000. There is an armchair made in 1909 that once belonged to Maximo Viola (who advanced the money for the publication of Rizal’s “Noli Me Tangere” in 1887) selling for at least P1,600,000. Then there is relief sculpture on Philippine hardwood, depicting a man lifting weights in the old-style bent press method, carved by Rizal himself during his Dapitan exile in 1892-1896, that should sell for at least P5 million.

All these cost more than an original letter by Rizal’s rival, Marcelo H. del Pilar (P400,000); an inscribed photograph of Gregoria de Jesus Bonifacio  (P200,000); and two manuscripts in her hand—a letter to Emilio Jacinto (P400,000) and a lengthy handwritten account of her hardships (P500,000).

Not by Rizal, but associated with him, is a lot of 10 letters, a recipe for Bologna sausage and a historically significant document—the most important in the lot but far too deteriorated for me to read—that concerns the first of Doña Teodora Alonso’s two imprisonments. All the papers pertain to Teodora Alonso, Rizal’s mother.

The Bologna sausage recipe may seem like the most trivial in the lot, but it was readily accessible in English, unlike the other documents in Filipino, Spanish and Portuguese. Because it had been reproduced in a book on Rizal’s food, it was hoped to be by Rizal because of the initials “JR” scribbled on the bottom. Written in a feminine hand, I presumed it was written by “Panggoy,” Rizal’s younger spinster sister Josefa Rizal.

I had hoped that the initials read “JB” instead of “JR,” to make this Bologna recipe something from the hand of Josephine Bracken. Closer inspection, though, dated the recipe to March 1893, when Rizal was in Dapitan and his mother and sisters were in Hong Kong. The sender was a certain Rosa Gutierrez.

Another letter, mislabeled as a letter from Rizal’s cousin (not his classmate) Sixto Lopez, is in Portuguese. Thanks to our ambassador in Lisbon, Celia Anna Feria, the English translation is as follows: “Rosa Maria da Cunha profoundly thanks the honorable Madame Teodora Alonzo Rizal and her honorable sons for their finesse and good wishes, and hopes to have the honor of their company for a cup of tea tonight, as well as that of her nephew the honorable Mr. Lopez. Hong Kong. 9 January 1892.”

Constipated historians may dismiss these as “trivial” because they talk about family matters that do not concern us, Rizal’s heroism, or the birth of the nation. However, the papers of Rizal’s mother flesh out the background of Rizal’s family life and the home that formed him into the National Hero we revere today. Let’s hope there is more where these came from.

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