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The Rizal, a Noble Alonzo
A Program Of The Philippine Centennial
December 30, 1996 marks the centenary of the death of Dr. Jose Rizal, the first Filipino
who imbued countrymen with a sense of national and racial pride and a consciousness of
national unity.
Prodigiously gifted, Rizal used his genius to improve the lot of his people who were then
under Spanish rule. A pacifist to the end, Rizal chose to fight ignorance and injustice
with the pen.
Through his writings, Rizal urged the Filipinos to regain the pride in themselves and in
their race they possessed in pre-Spanish times. In his essay The Indolence of the
Filipinos, Rizal maintained this so-called indolence was the result of. misgovernment
and exploitation by the Spanish for over three centuries. His two thinly-disguised novels Noli
Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo exposed the social and political injustices
suffered by the Filipinos. Rizal was shot on that fateful morning of December 30,. 1896
for the alleged crime of rebellion.
But it was already too late to silence him. Philippine nationalism had been born and
Rizal's ideas would live on. Once again, the pen proves mightier than the sword.
On the l00th year anniversary of Dr. Jose Rizal's martyrdom, Filipinos recall, with
gratitude, what he did for the cause of Philippine independence; they bask in his ideas of
national and racial dignity; and inspired by his life, his many talents and
accomplishments, they recognize their own potential.
The true legacy of Dr. Jose Rizal to the Filipino people may very well be that he
showed them what a Filipino could be.
No one echoes that more vividly than what his grandnephew Atty. Benjamin A. Alonzo had
said,
"Filipinos are second to None"
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