The title

Rizal had to define the word filibustero to his German friend Ferdinand Blumentritt, who did not
understand his use of the word in Noli Me Tangere. In a letter, Rizal explained: "The word
filibustero is little known in the Philippines. The masses do not know it yet. I heard it for the first
time in 1872 when the tragic executions (of the Gomburza) took place. I still remember the panic
that this word created. Our father forbade us to utter it, as well as the words Cavite, Burgos (one
of the executed priests), etc. The Manila newspapers and the Spaniards apply this word to one
whom they want to make a revolutionary suspect. The Filipinos belonging to the educated class
fear the reach of the word. It does not have the meaning of freebooters; it rather means a
dangerous patriot who will soon be hanged or well, a presumptuous man."

By the end of the nineteenth century, the word filibustero had acquired the meaning "subversive"
in the Philippines, hence the book is about subversion.

[edit] Synopsis
Warning: Significant plot details follow.

Simoun, a wealthy jeweler, has recently come to the Philippines. His wealth and connections--he
is a friend of the Governor-General's--make him sought-after in society and influential as well. He
uses his influence to encourage government officials to become corrupt and further abuse the
people.

Only Basilio, now a young medical student, recognizes his true identity. Simoun is actually
Crisostomo Ibarra from Noli Me Tangere, turned bitter and vengeful. He has returned after
thirteen years to foment revolution and to rescue his beloved Maria Clara from the convent.

He tries to convince Basilio to join him. Basilio owes him a debt of gratitude for helping him bury
his mother in the Ibarra forest. Furthermore, Simoun knows of what his family sufered at the
hands of the authorities. He tries to convince Basilio to join him so that he may also take his
revenge but Basilio refuses.

Simoun's first attempt at revolution fails when he hears of Maria Clara's death and breaks down.
Then Basilio, along with other students, is arrested for forming an allegedly seditious
organization. His sweetheart Juli goes to plead with an influential friar to assist her in securing
Basilio's release. She is killed trying to escape the friar's amorous advances. When Simoun
arranges for Basilio's release, Basilio is now also bitter and vengeful, as well as grateful to
Simoun. He offers his full support to Simoun's second attempt at sparking a revolution and
watches as Simoun plants a bomb at the house where the wedding reception of Paulita and
Juanito Pelaez is taking place. There are many illustrious guests at this mansion, formerly the
house of Noli Me Tangere's Capitan Tiago, including the Governor-General and Padre Salvi.

Seeing all the people, most of them innocent guests who are about to be harmed, Basilio's
conscience starts to bother him but he knows he has to escape. As he starts to run away, he
sees his best friend Isagani standing disconsolately near the house. Isagani had been working
toward reform and with his idealism, intelligence, and eloquence had become something of a
leader among the students. Until recently he had been the beautiful Paulita's sweetheart. Paulita
had been charmed by his poetic nature but she was bored by his patriotic ideals. The arrest of
students convinced her that it would be more practical to marry Juanito, a rich businessman's son
who did not involve himself in such dangerous matters.

Basilio feels compelled to tell Isagani of the plot. Knowing that the woman he loves is inside,
Isagani runs into the house, grabs the bomb and throws it into the river, averting the explosion
and the revolution.

Simoun takes refuge in the home of a kind Filipino priest, Father Florentino, knowing it is only a
matter of time before he is arrested. Having abandoned all hope, Simoun takes fatal poison.
Before he dies, Padre Florentino hears his last confession. He expresses his conviction that
Simoun's plans failed because he chose to do them by unjust means. He assures Simoun that
there is still hope for the liberation of the country. Upon Simoun's death, the priest takes his
jewels and commends them to the sea, praying that the wealth that was once used for bribery
and corruption would one day be found by one who would use it for a just purpose.

The plot is similar to that of Alexandre Dumas, père's French classic The Count of Monte Cristo.
Both narratives revolve around a man's determination to avenge himself and reclaim his beloved
fiancée. The protagonist of each novel disguises his identity and comes up with an intricate plot of
revenge and retribution.

ACTION HERO - THE DAPITAN EXPERIENCE

The first 30 years of Rizal's life were spent as the student and
inspirational motivator. From 1892 to 1896,his long years of exile in
Dapitan were his last four years. By this time, his already written his
famous two novels that woke up the nation of sleeping dog ;-) (Noted on
my last posting) Having finished his MD/PhD he returned to practice his
craft. He established school and became a teacher, even taught English.

He became the action hero, re-invented himself. He applied not only his
various educational training, but what he learnt from his travel
experience. He showed the native merchant how to compete against the
Chinese trade monopoly. Thebalikbayan did not write but set
example and achieved great that remained concretely in the city of
Dapitan. His years in Dapitan, he actually planted more than the dreams
amazingly as a prisoner in Mindanao. If written or spoken words are
enough, it is easy to champion a cause. Advocating by discussing or
exposing issues are only starting softwares, sabi nga minsan panay salita
lang. Here in Dapitan, he was more than the proverbial man of letters. Fr
B F Nebres, SJ, the president of Ateneo took inventory of Rizal's
achievement in the southern city.

Address at the awarding of the Knight Grand Cross of Rizal (sum-up)

(Note: On Dec. 30, 2006, the 110th death anniversary of Dr. Jose P.
Rizal, University President Bienvenido F. Nebres, SJ, was conferred the
Knight Grand Cross of Rizal by the Order of the Knights of Rizal, a
chartered organization that commemorates and perpetuates the heroism
of our national hero. The conferment ceremony, led by KOR Supreme
Commander Hilario G. Davide Jr., former Supreme Court chief justice,
was held at the international headquarters of the KOR in Manila. Fr.
Nebres is the 41st KGCR since the organization was established as the
"Orden de Caballeros de Rizal" in 1916. Below is the address delivered by
Fr. Nebres during that momentous occasion.)

It is with great humility and deepest gratitude that I receive this great
honor of the Knight Grand Cross of Rizal. I would like to thank from the
heart Supreme Commander, Sir Hilario G. Davide, Jr., KGCR and the
Order of the Knights of Rizal for this singular privilege.

There have always been two very strong drives in my life. One is towards
the intellectual life and it is this that led me to enter into the world of
pure mathematics. The other has been a deep love of country and a
paramount goal of helping bring about a better life for our people. I
think that my own love of country goes back to childhood, to land and
family and friends, to reading the novels of Nemesio Caravana and others
translated into Ilocano in the Bannawag. It has been the constant value
in my life. But in college days, it was clearly Rizal who articulated this
commitment and love for me. The Noli and Fili and the Ultimo Adiosleft
an indelible mark on my vision and commitments and I constantly return
to these lines from the Ultimo Adios as expressing as well my own hopes
and dreams:

Mis suenos cuando apenas muchacho adolescente

Mis suenos cuando joven y ya lleno de vigor
Fueron el verte un dia, joya del Mar del Oriente,
 Secos tus negros ojos, alta la tersa frente
Sin ceno, sin arrugas, sin manchas de rubor.

My dreams when I was just a young adolescent,

My dreams when a young man, now filled with vigor
Were to see you one day, jewel of the Eastern sea,
Your dark eyes dried of tears, your brow held aloft
Unclouded, unfurrowed, unblemished and unashamed.

I have spent much of December working with our students and civic and
religious leaders to respond in some small way to the tragedy
experienced by our countrymen in Bicol and Marinduque. The theme of
this year's Rizal Day celebration, "Rizalism: The key to Global Peace,
Solidarity and Prosperity", takes on a particular urgency as we face the
challenge of so many homeless and hungry kababayans.

The usual tradition in Rizal Day speeches is to quote from Rizal's writings
excerpts about peace, solidarity and prosperity. These are clearly
themes in his writings. But we have been quoting these writings for over
a century now and I thought that for today it would be better to look at
what Rizal did, not so much what he wrote, that can guide us towards
peace, solidarity and prosperity. We can find this in the work he did
during his four years in Dapitan, beginning 16 July 1892 till 31 July 1896.

Among the many Rizaliana items at the Ateneo de Manila Archives and
Library (which include a rosary, pens, honor cards, prizes, and, on loan,
the water heater where he hid the Ultimo Adios), we have a letter dated
March 12, 1896, addressed to his sister, Sra. Dona Maria Rizal. We have
the letter, because Maria was the grandmother of former Ateneo
President, Fr. Jose A. Cruz. The letter is in Tagalog and it reads:

Minamahal kong kapatid:

Kalakip ang sulat ni Moris, bago pa lamang nagaaral sumulat.

Mataba, maitim, ngunit marunong nang lumangoy ng kaunti. Malikot
lamang totoo at malaro, palaging patakbo at sapagkat ang aming bahay
ay de tembladeras, ay malimit mangahulog ang mga botellas. Matalas
ang ulo, daig ang dalawa ni Osio sa magsaulo, ngunit daig siya ni Tan sa
cuenta at sa ingles. Sa dahandahang cuenta ay daig silang lahat ni Osio.

Iginawa siya ng camisolang kanyamo ni Miss J. at totoong malakas

pupunit ng damit. Padalhan mo ng sombrerong malapat ng hwag totoong
umitim. Mabuti ang pagaalaga sa kanilang tatlo ni Miss J., at mahal sila
sa kaniya, kaya siya lamang ang tawag-tawag ng lahat. Ang tawag nila
aunty. Si Moris ay nagkakamisola lamang dahil sa malimit abutin sa
salawal. Magaling mangastila si Moris, ngunit maraming kapusungan na
galing Maynila, na mahirap maalis sa kaniyang bibig.

Ito na lamang, bumabati sa iyo si Miss J. Magutos ka sa iyong kapatid.

Jose Rizal

The boys mentioned here, Moris, Tan and Osio, were Rizal's nephews.
Moris is Mauricio Cruz, the father of Fr. Jose A. Cruz, S.J., my
predecessor as President of the Ateneo de Manila.

We have always known Rizal as a hero, greater than life. But here he is in
normal human proportions. He is writing to his sister about his three
nephews, one of them her son, Mauricio. He speaks of his wife Josephine
Bracken (they could not be married officially, but that was not their
fault) sewing clothes for the boys. Above all, he speaks of how they
are doing in their studies -- a deep concern of his.

Health, Education, Business and Livelihood

I have chosen these three areas of Dr. Rizal's life in Dapitan to show how
he sought to build community, solidarity, prosperity and peace. For
several years now I have been explaining to whoever would like to listen
that we need a new paradigm to understand poverty and to understand
how our country is going to come out of poverty.

This framework comes from Dr. Amartya Sen, who won the Nobel-Prize in
Economics several years ago for his work on Economics and Development.
He has dedicated his life to understanding economics, development, and
poverty. In several articles he says that in his study of countries
that have made most progress out of poverty, he found that they
attended to three fundamental concerns: basic health services (notably
potable water), basic education, and access to reasonable credit.

The reason this works he says is that poverty is, of course, a poverty of
resources, lack of income, lack of money. But more fundamentally,
poverty is a poverty of capability. One needs opportunities (like jobs) to
come out of poverty. But one can only take advantage of opportunities if
one has the capability. Job opportunities may come, but if one has TB or
Malaria, you will not be hired. Or if you have no high school education,
you will not be hired. So the most fundamental aspect of poverty is lack
of capability. And we can only build this capability through basic
education and provision of basic health services.
This is what I have been seeking to promote at the Ateneo de Manila for
the last several years. In health we have been working on the Leaders for
Health Project which has been delivering leadership and
management education to municipal health officers in over 50 4th and
5th class municipalities in Surigao del Norte, Western Samar, and Biliran.
I have been gratified to find that after three years, serious progress has
been made on their major need: potable drinking water.

We have also expanded our programs to help improve public elementary

and high school education. Public schools, because 93% of our elementary
pupils go to public schools and 80% to public high schools. I am especially
happy to tell you that we have seen substantial improvement in the
physical facilities and academic performance of elementary
school students in several schools we have focused on in the Payatas area
and in the elementary schools in the 23 poorest provinces.

One of our biggest involvements is with Gawad Kalinga. GK now has

built over 20,000 homes in almost all provinces in the country. The
Ateneo community now has several villages: 200 homes in Payatas 13,
100 in Gabaldon, about 50 in Milaor, Camarines Sur and we are starting
new ones in Sitio Ruby and Molave in Payatas. We also expect to
contribute towards a new village in Albay.

Sometimes you might think that Dr. Rizal would have been like many of
our political leaders today, maraming salita, kaunting gawa. Because
he wrote and spoke so well. But in his four years in Dapitan, he was puro
gawa, kaunting salita. He provided health care. He provided education.
He built water systems. He taught technology in agriculture and fishing.
He did many things -- with his own hands -- to create a better life for
people.

What has this to do with our theme of peace, solidarity and prosperity? I
work with two organizations, Synergeia for basic education and Gawad
Kalinga for building homes and communities, that have been working in
Maguindanao, notably in the towns of Upi, Barira and Datu Paglas.
Barira was the headquarters of the MILF, part of Camp Abubakar. Our
young people working there have found that our brothers and sisters
there, Muslims, Christians, Tirurays, have the same hopes and dreams we
all have, a better future for their children. They find hope in Gawad
Kalingabuilding homes and communities and in Synergeia and
others working to give a better education for their children.

When the majority of our people will have decent homes, safe drinking
water and basic health services, when they will have access to good
elementary and high school education and thus the opportunity to
build modest livelihoods for themselves and their families, then we will
have the foundations for peace, solidarity, and prosperity.

Dr. Rizal understood that in Dapitan. In Spain and Manila, he wrote and
preached against injustices. In Dapitan, he simply worked to create the
foundations for a better life for the people. He may well have
launched Gawad Kalinga a century ago.

Health

Let me begin with health. Soon after Rizal arrived in Dapitan, his former
favorite teacher at the Ateneo Municipal, Fr. Francisco Sanchez was
assigned as parish priest of Dapitan. The most famous work that Rizal and
Fr. Sanchez did together was to build the relief map of Mindanao. They
had wanted to build the relief map of the whole Philippines, but they
were not able to complete it. Fr. Sanchez had brought surveying
instruments with him. You might not know it, but while Rizal was
studying medicine at the University of Santo Tomas, he was also taking
part-time courses in surveying at the Ateneo de Manila and was a
licensed surveyor. The relief map of Mindanao is one of his important
legacies in Dapitan.

The more important collaboration between Rizal and the Jesuits was the
water system. Fr. Sanchez wrote to Manila and asked that a Brother Juan
Costa, who had built the water system in Balingasag, Misamis Oriental,
be assigned to Dapitan. Dr. Rizal and Bro. Costa then worked on building
the water system in Dapitan. An American engineer who later visited
that site writes:

"Another famous and well-known water supply is that of Dapitan,

Mindanao, designed and constructed by Dr. Rizal during his banishment in
that municipality by the Spanish authorities. . . . This supply comes from
a little mountain stream across the river from Dapitan and follows the
contour of the country for the whole distance . . . The length of this
aqueduct is several kilometers, and it winds in and out among the rocks
and is carried across gullies in bamboo pipes held by rocks or brick piers
to the distribution reservoir."

Today the Ateneo de Manila together with the Department of Health,

Pfizer and other donors is engaged in helping build public health systems
in several 4th and 5th class municipalities in the country, mainly in
Surigao del Norte, in Western Samar, Biliran, and Camarines Sur. We are
working with Doctors to the Barrios (much like Dr. Rizal) in 13
municipalities in Surigao del Norte. The first thing they did was to build
aqueducts such as Dr. Rizal built, because in all these municipalities the
greatest need is safe drinking water.

Moroever, of course, Dr. Rizal was a doctor and he built a little hospital
where he treated patients who came from all sides. In an 1893 letter to
Blumentritt he gave his clinic schedule as between breakfast and lunch
time. Had he lived, he would have launched the Doctors to the Barrios
long before Dr. Flavier did it. He would have given priority to developing
water systems to provide potable water for poor rural communities.

Education

We note in Rizal's letter to his sister, Maria, how he talked about the
education of his three nephews. In the same 1893 letter to Blumentritt,
he continued that his schedule after lunch was to teach his young boys
arithmetic, Spanish and English until 4 pm. Then he would do some
farming. In the night he would read and study. In an 1893 letter, Fr.
Sanchez writes: "In the afternoon of holydays, after the catechism class
was over in the church and after the games of the youth in the plaza, Dr.
Rizal and I would conduct an academy in education and fine arts. The
meetings were held on the ground floor of the convento, attended by
young people of Dapitan, to study drawing, Spanish, arithmetic,
geography, etc. -- After I left Dapitan, Dr. Rizal continued this work."

So Rizal conducted the education of the youth in Dapitan on two levels: a

basic level to teach them the fundamentals. And a higher level in the
academy.

We know that Rizal considered education the most important way for
Filipinos and the Philippines to achieve progress and a better life. He
conducted this education in so many different ways: in actual classes as
we described above, in constructing the map of Mindanao and thus
teaching geography, surveying, scientific apparatus and scientific
precision. He taught engineering in building the water system with the
people and, as we shall see below, he taught them economics and
business by building businesses and livelihood projects.

Had he lived, Dr. Rizal would have worked to build good schools in every
town and barrio and would have helped create a practical education for
all Filipinos.

Business, Economics, Housing and Livelihood

Rizal says that his daily schedule in Dapitan was divided between being a
doctor, taking care of patients, teaching, studying and scholarship and
farming and helping in the livelihood of people in Dapitan.

He bought a 70 hectare piece of land, planted 6,000 hemp plants, 1000

coconut trees, and many fruit-bearing trees. He brought in agricultural
machinery from the U.S. to show modern methods of farming. He also
brought in modern machines for modern hemp-stripping.

He noticed that the Dapitan fishermen were using very primitive methods
and having only very small catches. He asked his brother-in-law to bring
a big net for trawl fishing and to send him two good Calamba fishermen
who could teach the Dapitan fishermen better methods of fishing.

He looked at the way the people built houses and structures and brought
in a method he had seen in Belgium for making bricks. He invented a
machine for making bricks which the people could use for houses and
structures.

He understood the nature of business and engaged in business

ventures from fishing to copra to hemp.

Had Rizal lived he would have understood the need for agricultural
modernization, which we are still talking about today. He understood the
meaning and process of technology transfer and was not afraid of modern
technology. He would have brought in the technology that would help
simple farmers and fishermen.

Summary

Today there is so much talk and so little done. I invite us then to look to
Dr. Rizal's years in Dapitan and work in practical ways to build a better
life for our people.

In this way we carry on the legacy of Dr. Jose Rizal.

In his years in Dapitan, we see a Rizal not of the Noli or the Fili or of
many letters and poems, but a Rizal who said less and did a lot. He took
care of the education of children, he attended to the needs of the
Dapitan community, their health, their education, their livelihood, their
culture and vision. In that way, he laid the foundation for peace,
solidarity and prosperity among them.

May we be inspired by his example and do likewise.

Nestor Palugod Enriquez