Remembrances of our heroes

Around this time last year, my Spanish friend and I traveled to what she thought was the perfect penultimate leg of my 12-day, multi-city trip to Spain. Madrid, she suggested, is where I could relive fragments from the eventful life of Jose Rizal and other illustrious Filipinos who lived in Spain.

My Spanish friend, a lay missionary who stayed in our Beijing home for two summers, had watched the Cesar Montano starrer with us. After the movie, she declared to have become a fan and came to fathom the depth of our admiration of Rizal. “I’m sorry we colonized you,” she said apologetically while dabbing her tear-soaked eyes. I chuckled at her candor then countered that Filipinos wouldn’t have a Jose Rizal, the national hero, if not for the Spanish occupation.

That whole-day walk under Madrid’s searing heat brought us to Calle Amor de Dios, Rizal’s first residence, to Gran Hotel Ingles where Rizal is said to have led the toast to celebrate the success of the great Filipino painters Felix Hidalgo and Juan Luna, to Escuela de Bellas Artes, Colegio de Medicos and several other sites bearing markers of our heroes’ import.

As a peculiarly homesick traveler, I thought of how such sentimental walks could evoke nostalgia and spark resentment. These were my sentiments on that August month, a time when we toast our heroes and honor the martyrdom of one of our modern-day heroes. That it took place in the country of both our conquerors and ancestors was a remarkable paradox of that trip.

One year into that Spain visit, approaching National Heroes Day, I find myself walking again under the sweltering sun, this time with my parents at our very own historic Fort Santiago and other sites in Intramuros.

With them in tow, rediscovering Manila’s former walled city was a walk back in history and a glimpse at my father’s storied childhood. My mother, on the other hand, eagerly recalled her and her friends’ after-school walks along the ruins while crisp air billowed from the once pristine Pasig River. I added how decades after their time, I had, as a college student, watched a few weekend performances at the open air Rajah Sulayman Theater.

My father told of how his family lived in Binondo for three years and how their group of eight- to ten-year-old friends had made the dungeons their playground. He was overcome with emotions recollecting his youth while standing on hallowed grounds that bore witness to the gallantry of Filipinos.

Today, the white cross near the entrance to the dungeons stands as a reverent reminder of the thousands of anonymous soldiers who perished in combat or as prisoners of war. I muse on how our anonymous combatants struggled, their bravery unheralded. They fittingly deserve the respectful recognition in the form of the cross marker. This compels me to wonder how Rizal, his hero friends and our nameless patriots from centuries ago would have to navigate our present world flooded (pun quite intended) with giant billboards and social media feeds.

While reading the historical markers and listening to my parents’ accounts, I was in awe at how over the centuries, Fort Santiago has metamorphosed from being a defense fortress during the conquests, a ruined barracks after the wars until its restoration in recent years. There were a good number of tourists and group tours on that weekday, I was pleased to observe them engrossed in reading texts on the markers or listening intently to the guide. I wish they would spread the favorable things they learned about our country and our people, past and present.

Compared to our family’s visit some years ago, the Rizal Shrine’s current state reflects the depth of research work undertaken to upgrade it in terms of substance, aesthetics and relevance. With the enhancement of the text panels and displays, one would never fall short of knowledge of anything about Rizal. They eloquently express how his epic saga was woven into the lives of fellow patriots of his time, the generations that came after and how the new “hope of our motherland” could now find such narratives relatable.

Because a day would not suffice to rediscover Intramuros (we love to take our time and read extracts when visiting historical places), we opted to revisit San Agustin Church and Museum, saving Bahay Tsinoy and Museo de Intramuros for another date. Along the way I stopped to read a specific marker, the former site of the Philippine Merchant Marine Academy or La Escuela de Nautica de Manila, where Juan Luna y Novicio is said to have studied from 1869-1872.

My family, the hubby especially, takes particular interest in anything about the Lunas. My late father-in-law used to recount the lineage that connects his father to the Luna matriarch because they all hail from the same town in La Union. At the San Agustin crypt, I stood by Luna’s grave still clouded with what I once read about his death. In “Two Lunas, Two Mabinis,” one of the “Looking Back” series of historian and professor Dr. Ambeth R. Ocampo, one is presented with another version of how Luna died – “Death by poison?” – contrary to what is stated in his death certificate, “angina pectoris” or heart attack. Regardless of the circumstances, I thought it appropriate to once again remember a great Filipino.

There are, in fact, too many great Filipinos. A featured speech in the book “20 Speeches that Moved a Nation” is “Homage to Luna and Hidalgo.” While it hailed the two great painters, these excerpts from Rizal’s address remains as resonant as they are today: “In the history of nations, there are names that are related to an event which bring love and greatness to mind; names which, like magic formulas, evoke agreeable and pleasant thoughts; names which somehow take on the meaning of an agreement, a symbol of peace, a bond of love among nations.”