Jose Rizal : Re-Discovering the Revolutionary Filipino Hero in the Age of Terrorism
JOSE RIZAL : RE-DISCOVERING THE REVOLUTIONARY FILIPINO HERO IN THE AGE OF TERRORISM BY E. SAN JUAN, Jr. Fellow, WEB Du Bois Institute, Harvard University Yo la tengo, y yo espero que ha de brillar un dia en que venza la Idea a la fuerza brutal, que despues de la lucha y la lenta agonia, otra vzx mas sonora, mas feliz que la mi sabra cantar entonces el cantico triunfal. [I have the hope that the day will dawn/when the Idea will conquer brutal force; that after the struggle and the lingering travail,/another voice, more sonorous, happier than mine shall know then how to sing the triumphant hymn.] -- Jose Rizal, “Mi Retiro” (22 October 1895) On June 19, 2011, we are celebrating 150 years of Rizal’s achievement and its enduring significance in this new millennium. It seems fortuitous that Rizal’s date of birth would fall just six days after the celebration of Philippine Independence Day - the proclamation of independence from Spanish rule by General Emilio Aguinaldo in Kawit, Cavite, in 1898. In 1962 then President Diosdado Macapagal decreed the change of date from July 4 to June 12 to reaffirm the primacy of the Filipinos’ right to national self-determination. After more than three generations, we are a people still in quest of the right, instruments, and opportunity to determine ourselves as an autonomous, sovereign and singular nation-state. Either ironical or prescient, Aguinaldo’s proclamation (read in the context of US Special Forces engaged today in fighting Filipino socialists and other progressive elements) contains the kernel of the contradictions that have plagued the ruling elite’s claim to political legitimacy: he invoked the mythical benevolence of the occupying power.
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