House of Rizal.

I saw it painted green, I saw red

Revised 05 June 2009 at 0625 hr  
THE GREEN-EYED MISTAH is what I shall call Ambeth Ocampo, Chair of the National Historical Institute of the Philippines starting today, as I write this, 03 June 2009, Wednesday in Manila. It was he who had the green fingers, who either gave the green light or he himself had the gay idea of painting green the Rizal Shrine in the City of Calamba, located South of Imperial Manila. Now the house of our National Hero looks effeminate, like someone I know, you know. Tell me what your paints are, and I'll tell you who you are.

How did I get to know about it? No, I don't read the papers anymore – too negative for my taste. One: I see fearless views but not balanced news. Two: Readers demand to know and insist that truth shall prevail – but truth is not enough. Ask any of the members of the Rotary Club; they can recite from memory 'The 4-Way Test' that is 77 years old (rotary.org):

Is it the truth?
Is it fair to all concerned?
Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

None of what we do can pass that test, right? Including that of Jun Lozada.

Notwithstanding, I came to know about The Greening of Rizal (my term) by The Green-Eyed Mistah because a good friend sent me an email, as is his wont, early today, at 0525 hours 03 June 2009, Wednesday Manila time, enclosing Ambeth Ocampo's whole column for today at the Philippine Daily Inquirer, 'Why Rizal's house turned green' (opinion.inquirer.net). And so, before I wrote this, I went to the Rizal Shrine at Calamba, an hour away from where I reside. To see is to believe, or belie. I came, I saw, I concurred not.

It was about 1100 hours, wrong time to shoot – but I was amused with what I was shooting. I knew the best time for photography was the early morning hours, but I was not a procrastinator this time; I didn't want to wait for tomorrow what I could do today.

No, I cannot associate Rizal with this green. My Canon PowerShot A540 photograph shows the dog Usman watching the boy Pepe Rizal watching the family's house from the back, eyeing the old walls with their new coat of pale green paint. This naughty boy seems to be saying, 'No, I don't think so.' Or, 'Let's see what shapes and shades will come out of that!' He's not amused. His nurse had frightened him with stories of aswang (vampire) and nuno (dwarf) so he would return to the table and eat his supper (joserizal.info). (You doubt that the boy Pepe was naughty? Read Gregorio F Zaide's biography again, Jose Rizal: Life, Works and Writings (2003, National Bookstore), especially 'School Days in Biñan' starting page 21. Pepe knew how to use his brain and his brawn.)

Rizal and his ubiquitous coat of green? No Sir, I cannot associate him with that green either. How about Rizal, member of Greenpeace? No. Environmentalism was born yesterday, not in Rizal's time. Being a collector of black animal and green plant specimens hardly made him a conservationist.

I can associate Jose Rizal with red and green, yes. He wasn't color-blind, so what was green was green, what was red was red.

Red: Once, he was thinking of Revolution, in 1891-1892, at the same time if not along with Marcelo H Del Pilar in Madrid and Andres Bonifacio in Manila (Wikipedia). What I know is that his soul brother Ferdinand Blumentritt wrote Rizal an agitated letter when he learned of Rizal's serious intentions to incite people to Revolution. Blumentritt's letter, dated 30 January 1892, says in part: 'Above all, I beg you not to meddle in revolutionary agitations. Because one who initiates a revolution ought at least to have the probability of success, if he does not wish to burden his conscience with useless bloodshed.' Which, incidentally, predicted the outcome of the Katipunan. Revolution devours its own children. Imbibing from the wellsprings of knowledge in Europe, Rizal should have known that.

Green: He is my naughty hero, not Andres Bonifacio, and my hero died for peace in peace. There is no way to peace, says AJ Muste; peace is the way. Even if you have to die to prove it.

The House of Rizal is green! If you weren't paying attention, in front, the green poster at the gate to the compound will knock you down; but the green argument of the NHI that the poster displays doesn't knock me off my editorial perch:

Brilliant green stalks of rice blanketing lush fields are a common sight among lowland Filipino farming communities. Then and now, verdant rice fields heralding an abundant harvest teemed in Calamba, Laguna. Among the town's successful farmers in the 1850 was the family of Francisco Mercado, who adopted the surname Rizal from the Spanish ricial meaning green fields, indicating the family's occupation as cultivators of the soil.

Brilliant, lush, verdant, abundant, teeming yes, but not rice fields. Calamba is Sugarcane Country, remember? That much I know of history, and as far as I have seen since 1959, the first time I went to Los Baños, the town after Calamba, to study at the Cow College known as the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture. Calamba: I don't remember anybody's Canlubang Rice Estate. It was sugarcane that Jose’s brother Paciano grew, drew and sold sugar out of to produce the green stuff to finance the younger brother’s sojourns to study medicine as well as imbibe the cultures of Spain, France, England, Austria, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong, and the United States – and initially to escape the ire of known and unknown enemies. The green fields of the Rizals were none but sugarcane.

Sugarcane is dark green; rice too – they must be green as green. If a plant is pale green, it means it is sick; it lacks the nutrient called nitrogen. Ask any self-respecting Municipal Agricultural Officer, MAO. And yes, any MAO knows it is the rice leaves and panicles that blanket lush fields ready for harvest, not the stalks.

And no, the Rizals were not themselves the cultivators of the soil; they were employers of the cultivators of the soil, contractors of the Corporation (Dominicans), as they were big, not small farmers. Sugarcane occupied them. Paciano wrote once to Jose: 'As the rains are keeping me at home and do not permit me to begin the work on the sugarcane, I'll take advantage of these days of the year to write you and will not do so again during the work in the sugarcane fields.' Sugar is sweet, but it occupies you.

Still from that green poster:

To honor the memory of the Rizal family and their way of life, the National Historical Institute (NHI) chose to paint the Rizal Shrine Calamba in hues of green. This choice is appropriate; in 19th century Philippines, the upper stories of the bahay na bato were painted in a variety of bright tints.

I don’t know about bright tints on stone houses. I come from Asingan in Pangasinan, and in the town plaza, the Spanish stone house that still stands at the crossing across from the Roman Catholic church is brick red, because it's made of bricks, and the upper story was never in a variety of bright tints. How do I know that? I saw it with my own eyes, and I'm not color-blind either. More than 50 years ago, from 1953 to 1957, I attended high school next to that house of the Salcedos, and that means I saw it at least a thousand times.

I also don't remember seeing any ancestral house of Spanish vintage painted green or any bright tint: none in Paoay and Vigan in the Ilocos Region, none in Cagayan De Oro City, none in Cebu, none in Puerto Princesa, none in Legazpi City, none in Manaoag, Pangasinan, none in Metro Manila, none in places I have visited or stayed in. This green house now blends with the grass instead of the house standing out, defined by the grass.

In his column, Ambeth Ocampo argues that the unstated reason behind the change from gray to green was to 'open our eyes to the agrarian roots of social unrest in the country.' And then he goes ahead and relates that the Rizals, as big tenants, refused to pay the rent – too high – imposed by the Corporate Dominicans. (Ocampo does not say it, but I know that in fact, the whole of Calamba protested against the sky-high rent, and went to court with the direct assistance of Jose Rizal, and all those who protested were evicted from their homes, not the least the Rizals.) I take it that Ocampo is implying that the agrarian root of social unrest in the country at that time was neither the farmers nor the farming. If so, green is not the proper symbolic color. What is the color of a greedy corporation?

Still from Ocampo's column:

Rizal’s house in Calamba is not just a tourist spot, it is a place that should inform, educate and inspire. It should open our eyes to new ways of seeing.

Yes, inform, educate, inspire. New ways of seeing, yes. We must look, think out of the box. Well, I have been inspired to write this. Sorry, but I can't see the green the way The Green-Eyed Mistah sees it. And no, the Reformation that Jose Rizal gave his life to is not a new way of seeing, except that the Spaniards refused to see it, except that the radicals among us refuse to see it.

Here are 2 new ways of seeing in case you have not seen or have so far refused to see in the life, faith and works of Jose Rizal:

(1) Frank C Laubach calls him 'the apostle of Filipino freedom' (joserizal.info). Yes and no. You will want to read again his poem when he was 8 years old, which is what activists cite as proof of his nationalism. That would be narrow. I have written about this; I have presented the original 'Sa Aking Mga Kabata' and published my own English translation 'To Kids Of My Own Time' in my essay of 19 June 2007, 'A Dangerous Peace' (frankahilario.blogspot.com). The freedom he wrote about was not independence but freedom from ignorance (the Filipinos' own) and freedom from abuse (the Spaniards'). He wanted education; he wanted representation in the Spanish Cortes.

(2) Why did he write his incendiary novels in Spanish when he knew that the illiterate masses could neither write nor read in Spanish? Simple: Those ignorant masses were not his target readers, that's why. You don't write for those who can't read – except if you're writing for Grade 1.

As a writer, I write for certain readers, neither for the faceless majority nor the faithless minority. Jose Mercado Rizal and Frank Agapito Hilario have the same target readers: Intellectuals. He chose Spanish; the rich and educated in the Philippines at that time spoke that language. I chose English; the rich and educated in the world speaks English. 2 writers at 2 different times with 1 overall purpose: AIDA. Creating Awareness leading to Interest leading to Desire leading to Action.

Of course, the House of Rizal that we’re looking at is only a replica, a facsimile, a look-alike. Near the front door of the house is a plaque that says the real Rizal house was destroyed during World War 2; by Executive Order of President Elpidio Quirino, the house was restored with the design and supervision of pioneer and innovator Architect Juan Nakpil (philippine-builder.com) and paid for by contributions of schoolchildren all over the country. It was inaugurated on 19 June 1950. No, Nakpil didn't have the house painted green, and he should have known. He is the Philippines' 1st National Artist.

Ocampo also argues that the choice of green as color is inspired by the meaning of the surname Rizal, which he says comes from the Spanish ricial, 'which describes a green field ready for harvest.' Sorry, but, a green field of rice ready for harvest is not pale green. In fact, it is not at all green - it is golden yellow, and it's beautiful!

Finally, from Ocampo's column:

Let’s go into some history. Contrary to popular belief, the present Rizal Shrine is not the original home of the National Hero. It is not covered by the same rigid conservation principles applied to a 19th century house.

Let's go into sane history. I want the House of Rizal
looking like an authentic gray ancestral home, not
looking like an authentic greened contemporary, layered,
imperial chocolate cake!