His family suffered injustice, too
REMEMBERING RIZAL’S MARTYRDOM
A LITTLE known trivia about the country’s national hero shocked the unsuspecting audience that gathered to observe the 118th year of martyrdom of Dr. Jose Rizal in Dagupan City on December 30.
At the program hosted by the Free Masons of the Philippines, Michael Camilo Datario, the guest speaker told his audience: ” If Dr. Jose Rizal was able to write his own biography before he died, he would have written that his own family had its own share of suffering from atrocities….” committed by the Spaniards.
Datario, the free mason’s worshipful district grand master, said the Rizal family suffered injustice under the ruling Spaniards despite their political and social status in life, being educated compared to other Filipinos whom the Spaniards called “Indios.”
Rizal’s mother, Teodora Alonzo, who was 54 years old at that time and was near blind, was arrested and was made to walk more than 30 kilometers from their home to a detention cell.
Then the family was driven out from their lands because the Dominican friars claimed the whole of Calamba as their domain.
“At that time, Rizal was in Europe and his father Francisco Mercado and brother Paciano Rizal were on exile in Hong Kong,” Datario said.
He surmised that it was the harassment and maltreatment that his family was subjected to could have added to the rage felt by Rizal when he wrote “Noli Me Tangere” and El Filibusterismo,” the two books that further enraged the Spaniards as well.
The rest is as history recounts it, he said.
The laying of wreaths, a rondalla number and the releasing of balloons added color to the program.
Mayor Belen Fernandez, who led the observance, recalled the martyrdom of Dr. Rizal on December 30, 1896, said Rizal did not die in vain. “He did his best to give us the freedom that we all deserved,” she said.
Like Rizal, she said, ” let us give hope to our countrymen” and called on government workers here to emulate Rizal’s sacrifice when he gave hope to his people who suffered in the hands of the country’s enemies.
City Schools Superintendent Gloria Torres urged students to remember and learn from the mistakes of the past. (Leonardo Micua)
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