Pinoys at the Palace
No, I don’t mean that Palace by the Pasig that many Pinoys would rather have nothing to do with, but the venerable Palace Hotel in San Francisco, where our daughter Demi and her husband Jerry took Beng and me last week for a weekend treat.
First opened in 1875 but destroyed in the great earthquake that brought San Francisco to its knees in 1906, the Palace was rebuilt and inaugurated anew in December 1909, for which centennial it’s preparing to celebrate grandly. The hotel is an imposing structure at the corner of Market and New Montgomery Streets downtown. When you step in, what immediately strikes you is the glass-roofed atrium, called the Garden Court, that serves as the main restaurant and which must have witnessed the entrance of many a distinguished personage beneath its Austrian chandeliers.
But what impressed me most about the Palace was its unusual Filipino connection, beginning with the large number of Pinoys on the staff, starting with the general manager, Clem Esmail, to the executive chef, Jesse Llapitan, and Amado Benin, one of the senior waiters who attended to us at breakfast with that extra solicitude that comes naturally to Filipinos. The front desk was manned almost entirely by Filipinos; many of the bellhops and the housekeepers were Filipinos.
And while the likes of Lea Salonga have checked into the Palace, the most celebrated Filipino on its guest list was none other than Jose Rizal. Until Amado reminded me of that fact — and of the presence of a brass marker honoring Rizal on the hotel’s wall around the corner — I’d forgotten that I’d actually written about Rizal’s visit to San Francisco a few years ago, in a long essay on the complex history of Philippine-American relations (in Portraits of a Tangled Relationship: The Philippines and the United States, published by Ars Mundi Philippinae, Manila, 2008).
Drawing on other sources, I noted that “… In late April 1888, a ship arrived in San Francisco and was quarantined for seven days to guard against smallpox. One impatient passenger, a Filipino, indignantly affixed his name to a letter of protest. When he got off the boat, he checked into the Palace Hotel, took a stroll, and seemed impressed by Market Street. But he would later write his friend Mariano Ponce that ‘I visited the largest cities of America with their big buildings, electric lights, and magnificent conceptions. Undoubtedly America is a great country, but still has many defects. There is no real civil liberty.’ That letter was signed ‘Jose Rizal.’”
The marker at the streetcorner reads thus: “Dr. Jose P. Rizal, Philippine national hero and martyr, stayed at the Palace Hotel from May 4 to 6, 1888, in the course of his only visit to the United States. Imbued with a superior intellect and an intense love for his country, Dr. Rizal sought to gain freedom for the Filipino people from centuries of Spanish domination through peaceful means. His writings, foremost of which were the novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, dared to expose the cancer of colonial rule and agitated for reforms. For this he was arrested, tried and executed by a firing squad on December 30, 1896. With his martyrdom, the man of peace fanned the flames of the Revolution of 1896, the first successful uprising in Asia against a Western colonial power. Installed on December 30, 1996 in commemoration of the first centennial of his martyrdom.”
We can argue, as many scholars and critics have done, about Rizal’s exact contribution to the revolution and the stature he enjoys, but you can’t look at that marker without feeling a surge of pride in your connection, however tenuous, to this remarkable man who went around the world before the rest of us did.
On that trip early in 1888, harassed by the Spanish authorities after the publication of the Noli, Rizal had gone to America from Manila via Hong Kong and Japan. (“I left my country in order to give my relatives peace,” he would later write Pastor Ullmer in London. He ends it by vowing, “Nevertheless I will go back!”) From San Francisco, he would go on to Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Illinois, and New York. On May 16 he left New York for Liverpool, England, crossing the Atlantic in nine days.
Looking back, he would reflect that “I visited the larger cities of America, where I saw splendid buildings. The Americans have magnificent ideals. America is a homeland for the poor who are willing to work. I traveled across America, and saw the majestic cascade of Niagara. I was in New York, the great city, but there everything is new. I went to see some relics of Washington, that great man whom I fear has not his equal in this century.”
Many Filipinos — or those who imagine that only with the coming of the Americans in 1898 did we learn English — forget that Rizal could speak and write in English. A gifted polyglot, he had been offered work in Japan after learning Japanese, and those who traveled with him marveled that “I could speak to every one in his own language and understand what he said.” In London, he wrote the chief librarian of the British Museum in perfect English: “Sir, As I wish to become a reader and to copy sculpture at the British Museum, I herewith forward the necessary letter of introduction from a house-holder and I shall be glad to hear from you. I am sincerely your obedient servant, José Rizal.
As the critic E. San Juan Jr. reminds us, Rizal foresaw America’s role in Asia, but curiously missed out on that country’s imperial designs. In “The Philippines a Century Hence,” Rizal writes: “Perhaps the great American Republic, whose interests lie in the Pacific…may some day dream of foreign possession. This is not impossible, for the example is contagious, covetousness and ambition are among the strongest vices… the European powers would not allow her to proceed… North America would be quite a troublesome rival, if she should once get into the business. Furthermore, this is contrary to her traditions.”
Speaking of Rizal in California, I was reminded by the Palace marker of a bust of Rizal that I saw in National City in San Diego during a previous visit, right in front of a mall where you can get anything Pinoy, from Goldilocks cakes to Chow King siopao, which hordes of Filipino-Americans line up for. Nothing quite so grand as the Palace Hotel’s Victorian opulence, but I’m sure Pepe himself would have appreciated the gesture of standing where most of the passersby actually knew who he was.
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(With many thanks to Dr. Robert Yoder’s website at http://joserizal.info and to http://www.joserizal.ph for many of these quotations.)
E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com, and visit my blog at www.penmanila.net.
