One Hundred Years of the Fili O. of the major activities to mark the centennial of the birth of Jose Rizal in 1961 was the placing of historical markers in every place that the hero lived in, visited or merely passed through, There were so many requesis for markers that the late historian Teodoro A. Agoncillo remarked sarcastically, “Aba eh, pati poste o pader na inihian ni Rizal ibig lagyan ng marker!” At that time there seems to have been a genuine affection for Rizal, judging by the press coverage then and the reminiscences of today’s adults who remember having donated, as school children, one centavo each to raise money for the centennial. Today, 30 years later, most of that hero- worshipping fervor has dissipated. In the late 1960s student activism called not only for a rewriting of our history, but for a review and overhaul of our national heroes. There was a move to replace the nonviolent ilustrado Rizal with the revolutionary plebeian Andres Bonifacio. Rizal was consigned to the dustbin of forgotten history. This explains the general ennui over the centennial of El filibusterismo that starts this month. Since 1987-the centennial of the Noli me tangere—there has been a Rizal centennial every year, and it will be so till 1996, the centennial of Rizal’s death, We have over-celebrated Rizal to such a point that things have ceased to become festivities. So the Fili is a century old this month, so what? But despite the mountain of books churned out by the Rizal industry on the hero’s life and works, the numerous translations, komiks, and study guides on the Noli and Fili, very little is being done and published on Rizal in terms of fresh research. Can you actually write something new about something so old? Yes, definitely, but you need curiosity and an open mind. After a century, no one has posed questions about Rizal's text based on the manuscript still extant in the vault of the National Library, Access has been restricted since the manuscripts were stolen and held for ransom in 1961, but faithful offset editions of both the Noli and the Fili have been around for so long. According to Jose Aicjandrino, a friend of Rizal who became a general in the Philippine Revolution, the Fili manuscript was completed in Brussels, Belgium, and it was he who canvassed printers and recommended F. Meyer van Loo in Ghent. Alejandrino played messenger between Rizal and the printers, delivering proofs and corrections, thus making him the first to read the Fili, For this service, Rizal gave Alejandrino the corrected proofs of the novel together with the pen he had lused in working out his corrections. Unfortunately, these mementoes were either lost or destroyed during the revolution. What we now have in the National Library is the manuscript measuring 23x36