Jose Rizal's gift to us

My cousin, Rose Filart Scott, descendant of his sister Olympia, and I sat together waiting for our turn at a program in honor of Rizal’s birthday.  “What happened to the letter we wrote for Secretary de Lima?”  I asked.

“I sent it,” she said, “but nothing happened.”

We are all descendants of Jose Rizal, our childless uncle, who had eight sisters, only six of them childbearing.  Boy, did they have children!  I remember at the last informal count we estimated there were roughly 600 of us scattered all over the world.  Today the fourth generation (from Francisco and Teodora) are in their 80s and 90s,  looking at us, the fifth generation, to do something.  We all want to do only one thing – to bring Rizal back to life again so that the children will know him and try to be like him.  That way maybe everyone can have a better future.

Rizal’s descendants share this single dream.  Once, we also shared a property in Los Banos that was bequeathed to the entire Rizal family by his older brother Paciano,  the man who very quietly formed Jose, who decided when it was time for him to go to Spain.  I do not know the size of the property.   I only know it belonged to the previous generations and one day our generation would inherit it and pass it on to the next generations. 

My mother managed the family property.  Ours was the lot closest to the boundary of UP Los Banos, the boundary of IRRI.  One day in 1974 Marcos took the property from us.  I heard a rumor that the idea  came from the then president of UPLB, who believed that Paciano had no heirs.  Paciano himself had many heirs.  The government said they needed the land to cultivate vegetables in the style of IRRI, which tried to improve the rice crop.  But since then the land has been mostly idle.

My mother’s farm had coconuts, rice, sugar cane, coffee and fruit trees.  She was paid the price of raw land.   It broke her heart.  We tried, have been trying since then, to get our property back but nobody in the government paid any attention to us.

I visited many years ago.  On my mother’s beloved property stands a tall building, the Plant Breeding building, which then looked mostly empty.  Up until around 12 years ago my mother’s farmhouse still stood, damaged but upright.  Then a typhoon hit the area directly and blew away what remained of our tiny farmhouse.

Lately, the Rizal Women, our generation’s group, decided to write a letter to ask President Noynoy Aquino, if we can get our property back and turn it into the The Rizal Center.  If we can get the property back, then the family will turn it into The Rizal Center.  We will raise the funds and turn the Plant Breeding Building into an auditorium, museum, lecture halls, study rooms.  The first floor can be a mall where we can sell memorabilia and open restaurants.  We can have offices for the Knights of Rizal, the Rizal cults, everything that has to do with Rizal and passes our judgment can be set up there.  It can become an outstanding tourist center where we will serve authentic Filipino food and portray our culture as refined as our family remembers it.  It is near enough Manila.  We – the Rizal Women – will manage it.

We know we can do it.  I have written about the old family adage:  You cannot paint the sky blue or pour the ocean into a hole.  Most of all you cannot win an argument with a Rizal woman.  We are all of us super-competent.  Tess Herbosa, the great-granddaughter of Lucia, is now the Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission.  She is an outstanding lawyer.  We all have our special skills, which we are willing to bring to the table.  Our problem is we don’t know who is the right person to talk to.  How do we get to talk to the President of the Philippines?  Can we turn this into one of his government’s projects with the private sector? 

Filipinos, the Rizal family has dreams too.  We want your children to know Rizal as a person, not as a cement statue.  As a little child, he explored nature.  Your children can explore nature in The Rizal Center in Los Banos as well.  Give us back our property and we will share it with the world by bringing Rizal and his dreams back to life again.  We need to break away from the past and start new lives.  We must use Rizal and his values as the example. 

Please, everyone who reads this, help us try to recover our inheritance from our ancestor, the national hero, Jose Rizal, as passed on to us by his brother Paciano.  Tell me what I can do to begin this formally.  When we get it back we promise to share Rizal with you and the rest of the world.

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