On Rizal´s Death Anniversary
By Rudy A. Arizala
Santiago, Chile 30 December 2007
Our national hero, Dr. Jose P. Rizal, in the foreword of his novel "Noli Me Tangere" (literally means "Touch Me Not"), compared our beloved motherland to a patient suffering from a cancer "so malignant a character that the least touch irritates it and awaken in it the sharpest pains", thus, as the practice in ancient times, she should already be placed "on the steps of the temple so that everyone who came to invoke the Divinity might offer a remedy."
Will that patient be like the dying unknown character in Rizal´s "Noli Me Tangere" found by Basilio in the forest? It may be recalled that the last words of that dying man after turning his head toward the East were: "I die without seeing the dawn brighten over my native land! You, who have it to see, welcome it - and forget not those who have fallen during the night!"
Curiously, those were more or less the same words in Rizal´s "Last Farewell" written by him before he was shot to death by musketry at Bagumbayan Field at about 7:00 a.m., on 30 December 1896: " I die just when I see the dawn break, / Through the gloom of night, to herald the day;"
Rizal foresaw through one of his characters in his novel that he would die without seeing the dawn brighten over his beloved land?
We say Rizal, our national hero, is a great man of the Philippines, even “the pride of the Malay race because of his love of country and aspiration for universal freedom and understanding among nations. Therefore, wherever we are, we commemorate his death anniversary every 30th of December.
It would just be fitting and proper if Filipinos or Fil-Ams who are in New York City and in nearby tri-state area would make a trip on 30 December 2007, to the Toy International Center at 200 Fifth Avenue, corner 23rd Street, New York City and view the Dr. Jose Rizal Marker installed in one of the walls of said building at the lobby, as homage to our national hero. That Toy International Center building is located where the former Hotel Fifth Avenue stood and Rizal stayed when he was in New York from 13 to 16 May 1888, on his way to Europe.