Keynote Address
of
His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos
President of the Philippines
At the International Discourse and Exhibition on Dr. José P. Rizal and the Asian Renaissance

[Delivered at the Putra World Trade Centre, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, October 2, 1995]

Rizal and the Southeast
Asian Renaissance

THIS CONFERENCE of international scholars honors an Asian intellectual whose life, work and martyrdom inspired the nationalist revolution that brought forth Asia’s first free republic—and animate the Filipino nation until now.

Let me begin by thanking the Government of Malaysia— through Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad—for this gracious gesture, on the eve of our celebration of the centenary of the Philippine Revolution.

Let me also express our appreciation to the prime mover of this conference—Deputy Prime Minister Ibrahim Anwar—and to its corporate sponsors: the Institut Kaijan Dasar, or the Institute for Policy Research.

A nation created by heroes

I bring the greetings of the Filipinos for our Malaysian brothers—with whom we claim a common heritage, a common vision, a common destiny—here in Southeast Asia.

The Philippines has suffered many changes in circumstance and fortune throughout its history. But its birth was nothing if not auspicious. Ours is a nation created by heroes.

Before the political persecutions of 1872, there was no Filipino nation. We were a collection of indios, mestizos and Creoles—Tagalogs, Capampangan, Ilocanos, Negrenses, Cebuanos, Ilongos, Moros—and the archipelago we inhabited was merely a place-name. But after the execution by strangulation of the martyr-priests Gómez, Burgos and Zamora in February 1872, no further repression could prevent the Filipino nation from being born.

Jose Rizal has been called—correctly—the first Filipino. He was the first to conceive of all the peoples of our archipelago as one grand union—transcending tribe, ethnicity, religion, language, custom—ang sambayanang Pilipino, “one Filipino nation.” Rizal gave our more than 7,100 islands, scattered between Borneo and Taiwan, a sense of being one.

A universal man of many talents

What sort of man was José Rizal?

He was truly a man of his times. As a civilized individual of the age before specialization, Rizal was a universal man— a man of many talents and many interests. In that way, he was emblematic of his contemporaries—among whom were the Indians Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi and the Chinese K’ang Yu-wei and Sun Yat-sen.

These nationalist leaders and intellectuals were all born within a few years of each other. All were endowed with brilliance of mind and remarkable character. And all consecrated their lives to their country’s cause.

This was at the height of the Western effort to incorporate Asia, Africa and Latin America into its colonial order. Before that time, the tides of history had flowed largely westward. But—by the beginning of the industrial era-Europe’s superior science, technology and organizational capacity had enabled it to subdue much of the world and integrate the non-European peoples into its system of long distance commerce.

Yet imperialism carried the seeds of its own destruction. Economic growth in the colonial countries, no matter how limited, gave rise to an indigenous middle class—whose sons and daughters grew up to challenge imperialist rule.

Rizal himself represented the modernizing Filipinos of his time: the larger tenants on the friar estates—a rising middle class that saw, in the corruption and inefficiency of colonial government, and in the exploitative economic ties with Spain—a hindrance to the modernization of their country.

We had largely forgotten how close to one another the peoples of colonial Asia felt. A consciousness of oppression suffered in common—and a common love of liberty-brought our peoples together then. News of one Asian people’s rising evoked a vicarious sense of triumph everywhere in the region.

The Philippine Revolution of 1896, the 1900 Boxer Rebellion in China, and Japan’s spectacular defeat of Russia in 1905—all these became beacons in the groping for liberty of all Southeast Asian peoples.

Colonialism stirs a sense of self-awareness

Rizal’s time was a period of unrest and excitement throughout East Asia—a time of ferment strikingly similar to the European Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. And it was Western dominance itself that stimulated Asia’s self-awareness.

Everywhere in the captive countries there was a sense of rebirth—a quickening of the spirit, a resurgence of vigor, new ways of thinking—a renewed belief that great things were possible once again.

The most perceptive among our intellectuals realized early on that salvation lay in modernizing indigenous society—in adapting traditional culture to the Western intrusion. This was why Rizal put so much faith in scientific education—and K’ang Yu-wei in 1898 urged the study of Western culture on the Kuang-hsu Emperor.

The Asian intellectuals also found it ironic, as did the young Vietnamese who flocked to the University of Hanoi when it opened in 1907, that the Western rights of liberty and equality should be taught and denied at the same time.

In Rizal, a foster child of the European Enlightenment, this discrepancy between Western libertarian thought and colonial practice was particularly strong.

The repressions of 1872 gave the colonial regime a spurious stability—but only until a new generation of Filipino patriots came to manhood.

Young men born to be heroes

Of our heroes of the propaganda period and the Revolution, the most striking quality was how young they all were.

Rizal, at age 26, had finished his incendiary novel, Noli Me Tangere, followed quickly by its sequel El Filibusterismo—and he was dead at 35.

Andres Bonifacio founded the secret society Katipunan when he was 29 years old. When the Revolution began, Bonifacio’s faithful deputy, Emilio Jacinto, was still four months short of 21. And Emilio Aguinaldo, at age 27, was the victorious general of the Revolution; and, at 29, founder and President of Asia’s first free Republic.

If heroes are born and not made, then Rizal was born a hero. From his early youth, he self-consciously dedicated his life, his works—even his death—to our country.

Thoughtful, studious, conscious of his own talent, seeking his pleasure in history, literature and science, he easily won the respect of his fellow student-exiles in Europe.

In Europe’s more spacious atmosphere, Rizal set himself to refute the colonial myth of Malay indolence the Spaniards propagated, and the racialism he abhorred. “The law,” he noted wryly, “knows no color of skin; nor does reason differentiate between nostrils.”

Researching in the British Museum for a year, he painstakingly annotated a Spanish history of the Philippines in an effort to establish his people’s “ancient dignity and culture.”

His people’s failings he ascribed to the enervating influences of a decrepit colonial regime.

This same theme pervaded his novels, through which Rizal sought to excite into action “the soul of the race—to revive in the Filipinos the. . . spirit of dignity and self-respect—by making them see. . . [that] they have a worthy past—which they [had] foolishly renounced in exchange for beliefs and strange customs they do not understand.”

Creating a Filipino nation

Of his generation of student-exiles in Spain, Rizal was the first to realize that reform and modernization could never be achieved under foreign rule. If they are to be redeemed, Filipinos must look to themselves; Filipinos must trust in their own strength. Rizal saw as the goal of revolution the creation of a nation of Filipinos—conscious of their human and national dignity and ready to sacrifice themselves to defend it.

He rebuked his own exile-community for being brave only while away from the fire. “The field of battle is the Philippines; that is where we should meet. . . . That is where we should help one another; that is where we should suffer or
win, together. . . .”

Sealed letters he left behind on his last voyage homeward testify to his own quiet determination—” to bear witness with my example to what I have always preached”—and “to show those who deny our patriotism that we know how to die for our duty and our convictions.”

In late 1891 Rizal turned his back on Europe and sailed eastward—accepting that only revolution would suffice to cure his country’s sickness of the heart and soul.

The Spaniards were correct to identify Rizal as the “soul”-although not the actual military leader of the nationalist revolution-and to hand him over to a firing squad after a mock trial. Because it was his teaching which ignited the revolution that started among the Manila region’s underclass.

In 1872 the young secular priest Jose Burgos, whom Rizal idolized, had broken down momentarily while being strapped to the garrote. When his own turn came, Rizal, conscious of the example he was setting for his people’, walked calmly to the execution ground; refused a blindfold, and asked the soldiers to spare his head. The army doctor on duty felt Rizal’s pulse at the last moment—and found his heart beating steadily.

After it killed Rizal, the regime itself lasted little more than a year. The democratic republic Aguinaldo established in June 1898 survived as a guerrilla movement until 1902— challenging American efforts to subdue it. And exactly 50 years after Rizal’s death, the restoration of Philippine independence in 1946 set off East Asia’s independence movements after World War II.

No plaster saint

How does one sum up such a life?

Rizal certainly was no plaster saint. As his biographer and translator, the Filipino diplomat Leon Maria Guerrero, noted: “Rizal was not perfect; he was not always right, but. . . his humanity was precisely the secret of his greatness.”

“The way he died is not as important as the way he lived; and, since his life was essentially an apostleship, [it is] not so important as what he thought and wrote.”

From Rizal’s writings, until now, we Filipinos seek our moral standards; from his precepts we still measure our ethical progress. And by Rizal’s concept of a nation—as “moral, unselfish, responsible, based uncompromisingly on a general recognition of mutual rights and duties”—we Filipinos still aspire to measure ourselves.

We Southeast Asians are all Rizal’s spiritual heirs—as we are the inheritors of all the heroes of our region’s past. We are the beneficiaries of the freedom they fought for—and nourished with their blood.

Our task today is to enrich this legacy of liberty, to shape Southeast Asia’s future according to our noblest hopes.

And this we can do only if we strive for a higher unity than we have now. Only the unification of Southeast Asia will enable us to take command of our own fortunes and establish a zone of peace, freedom and stability in our portion of the world.

Vision of a Southeast Asian community

For the first time in 500 years, Southeast Asia’s destiny lies largely in the hands of Southeast Asians themselves. Our task as leaders and thinkers is to build new relationships—design new institutions—that will ensure enduring peace and prosperity for all the peoples who share this region we all love.

ASEAN’s incorporation of all the ten Southeast Asian countries—now only a matter of time—gives us a strong foundation for a still higher stage of regional cooperation—a true Southeast Asian community.

Toward that long-term goal, activities like these are useful. Rediscovery of our shared heritage of heroism will awaken a community of interests among our peoples.

Rizal speaks of the inheritance of wisdom that every generation receives from its fathers. And every generation’s duty is to husband that inheritance—so that it is multiplied every time it changes hands.

Some of us gathered here will die “without seeing the dawn” of Southeast Asian unity. But we can now lay the groundwork for this unification.

We can so use our stewardship of our countries—we can so use our inheritance of freedom—so that those Southeast Asians who come after us will say “that not all were asleep in the night of our forefathers.