Jose Rizal's Birth - The Birth of Filipino Consciousness

Jose Rizal came into this world on June 19, 1861. Thirty years later, his writings gave birth to our consciousness as a race and as a nation. If Rizal had not been born on that day, we Filipinos might still be second-class, brown-colored pseudo-Spaniards. In Rizal's time and before he wrote his novels, we did not know who we are. In his book, El Filibusterismo, Rizal wrote that Spaniards called us natives as "Indios."

Throughout the history of the Philippines, the natives across the islands showed some semblance of nationalism. They resisted the colonizers in small pockets and localized across the islands. Those expressions were like the flicker of fireflies in the night - fleeting. They were incomparable to the magnitude of the viral spread of Rizal's idea about self-identity and self-determination. His idea glowed like an ember in the forest that did not burn out but grew into a howling blaze spreading across the islands.

Rizal's writings spurred the idea of being a Filipino and being free. The Spanish government in the Philippines didn't like what he wrote.  They kept the Filipinos of that era ignorant from the idea of nationalism and freedom. So they feared what's going on inside Jose Rizal's mind and what's coming out of his handwritings as dangerous to their continued governance of the islands. They needed to cut short the idea spreading among Indios' about self-identity and thirst for freedom.

The invention of the printing press centuries earlier enabled the spread of information much faster. It's later version facilitated the spreading of Rizal's idea of our identity through his books "Noli Me Tangere" and "El Filibusterismo." Unfortunately, the Spaniards saw Rizal's writings as subversive. It was like hot, scalding boiled potato when someone touched it.

Nonetheless, those books went viral among the Indios.  It was unlike the news in social media today that have turned viral. They wanted a copy. They read them in the confines of their homes using light from lamps inside their houses with moths circling around it. They read them in secret.

I'm sure Indios will not read Rizal's books in broad daylight unless he or she is foolhardy enough knowing that prying eyes and loose lips will send a reader to be garroted in Fort Santiago. 

In my view, Jose Rizal's books outclassed best seller books of modern times not because of the number of books sold but because possessing one means death and yet everybody wanted a copy considered as contraband.

If Rizal hadn't been born that day or decided not to write those books because of its repercussions, we would probably be talking with each other in various Creole dialects across the archipelago on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. We might still be under the shadow of Mother Spain.  Our native land is simply just an unborn idea.

Instead, we spoke English fluently second only to Filipino or other dialects. We became known as brown Americans. I guess we're a work in progress even up to this day. But, it's a good thing Rizal planted the idea of being Filipino and being free which is sufficient for us as we move towards the future.