Rizal@150. Survey of the Rizal Day issues of The Philippine Republic, 1923-27

The Philippine Republic was a monthly magazine that Clyde H. Tavenner edited and published in Washington DC in the 1920s "to tell the American people facts about Filipinos and Philippine independence that they ought to know, but do not know."

Tavenner was a newspaper writer (1908-1912) who "championed the cause of the Filipino people in articles printed throughout the United States" before he was elected as the representative of the 14th district of Illinois to the 63rd and 64th Congresses (1913-1917) when he "cooperated with then Commissioner Manuel L. Quezon [for] the passage of the Jones Law, advocating it in the public press [and] doing missionary work among members of Congress."  He visited the Philippines in 1919, and worked with the Philippine Press Bureau in Washington DC (1919-1923).

Jose Rizal was a rallying "Greatest Filipino" icon in the monthly magazine's campaign in support of Philippine independence.  He was its forceful argument against the prevailing cultural and racial prejudices of the opposition in the independence movement.

First Issue (left, December 1923); Rizal Number (December 1925)

The magazine felt it fitting "that the first issue of this journal [December 1923], which aspires to be of assistance to the people that Rizal loved so devotedly, should be featured with Rizal’s likeness on the cover page.” The same picture would be on the cover of the Rizal number of December 1925 with the caption "Greatest Filipino".

Cover, December 1924 Issue.

The December 1924 issue featured his full-body figure surrounded by pictures of monuments, which we believe were either of the entries to the Rizal monument competition before or those that Tavenner saw during his visit to the Philippines. The caption reads "He Gave His Life For His Country".

At that time, JP Rizal was not known by many Americans. Thus, The Philippine Republic was selling the national hero alongside campaigning for sympathy and support for the grant of immediate independence to the Filipino people. It also ensured that the memory of the hero's sacrifices were kept alive among the Filipinos in the United States who were working or studying in colleges or universities across this country.  The December numbers would be followed in the next two months by accounts of Rizal Day commemorative programs organized by Filipino associations in America.


The Rizal campaign in America, if we can call it that, used both materials written by the hero himself, and Filipino and American Rizalists.  Of the latter, the most notable was Pulitzer prize winner Charles Edward Russell, author of the books "The Outlook for the Philippines" and "The Hero of the Filipinos".

The Charles Derbyshire translation of "My Last Farewell" was the centerpiece of the Rizal campaign.  Parts of it were widely quoted in the arguments for Philippine independence.  Three Rizal numbers had one-page spreads for it.  The 1924 issue had the Rizal bust, while the 1925 and 1927 numbers boxed the the photograph of the execution and the eye-witness account of Sir Hugh Clifford, as shown below.

"My Last Farewell" spreads in the 1924 (left), 1925 and 1927 issues (right).

The magazine called it the "An Immortal Poem" in the framed editorial feature of December 1925.  In the same issue, then Director Vicente Bunuan of the Philippine Press Bureau in Washington DC mentioned in his "Rizal as a Poet" article how this poem was read into the proceedings of the US Congress in 1902.

Editorial feature, December 1925.

To appreciate the growing up years of the hero, the magazine published "Rizal’s Own Story” in the December 1926 number with the note that Rizal wrote the first three chapters in 1878 when he was seventeen years old, referring to Chapter 1 ("My birth and earliest years in Kalamba") to Chapter IV ("The injustice done my mother"), and that Chapter IV and the next one were written in 1879 when he was 18.  The second installment of his story came in December 1927 including his "My First Reading Lesson" with the note that Rizal wrote them several years after the previous chapters.”

In December 1923, readers got to know Teodora Alonso through “The Story of Jose Rizal’s Mother” by Camilo Osias, which was reproduced from the Philippine Readers. Sidelights from this work would appear again in the 1925 issue.

Aside from the famous poem that he instructed his sister Trinidad in English to look for inside his reading lamp, which they had a hard time locating and extricating with a hairpin, some of his poems were also featured in The Philippine Republic.  The article "Sadness Permeates All of Rizal's Poems" (December 1927) included the translation of his "A la Virgen Maria" by Charles Edward Russell.  It should be very interesting to compare the later translations like Nick Joaquin's with Russell's "Sonnet: to the Virgin Mary":

           Dear Mary, soul of peace, our consolation, 

           That to the heavy-stricken heart doth bring

           The cool sweet waters from the all-healing spring, 

           From that skied throne where since thy coronation 

           Our hearts are bowed in tender adoration, 

           Lean down to hear my griefs vague whispering, 

           And o'er me, bruised and broken, deign to fling 

           The shining robe of thy serene salvation. 

           Thou art my mother, placid Mary; thou 

           Mine only hope, my one sure source of strength. 

           Wild is the sea and inky dark the night. 

           One beacon shinesl--the star upon thy brow.

           Sharp sin assails me; but thy look at length 

           Puts sin and grief and thoughts of death to flight!

Russell was a major drum beater in the JP Rizal and independence campaign. He wrote a long poem as tribute to "Jose Rizal" (December 1923, reprinted December 1925).  He also penned “Rizal the Absolute Master of Himself”(December 1924) and “Dr. Jose Rizal Embodiment of Filipinos’ Independence Aspirations” (December 1927).  He and E. B. Rodriguez collaborated on the "Hero of the Filipinos" (1923), published in New York City and sold at $3 each, the first book about JP Rizal by an American author.

There were other interesting materials on the Philippines and JP Rizal in the December issues of The Philippine Republic, among them ---  

• “Jose Rizal/His Place in History Is Steadily Rising”(1924)

• Rizal Day Speech of Hon. Parley Parker Christensen before the Filipinos of Chicago (1924)

• "Rizal and Del Pilar—A Comparison” by Teodoro M. Kalaw (1925)

• "American Poets Pay Tribute in Verse”(1925)

• “Why Rizal’s Death Is Commemorated by Filipinos” by Clyde H. Tavenner (1925)

• "A Washington Man [Stephen Bonsal] Who Knew Rizal”.(1926)

• "Father Burgos, Who Also “Fell in the Night”/Story of the Martyr Whose Unjust Execution Influenced Rizal’s Entire Life” by Clyde H. Tavenner (1927)

That was Jose Rizal in the propaganda for full Philippine independence then when his death was still fresh in the collective memory of the Filipinos here and in America.

Today at his 150th birthday, who is he in the nation's life? Who is he outside the classroom where his Noli and Fili are required readings? Who is he to the surviving Filipino veterans of America's foreign wars waiting in South of Market, San Francisco, the survivors of the martial law regime, EDSA I and II, and those trying hard to find the "daang matuwid"?

References for those who want to pore through the Rizal numbers of The Philippine Republic (1923-27) at the University of Michigan digital collections:

• December 1923-25 numbers can be retrieved at http://name.umdl.umich.edu/acc6198.1924.001 
• December 1926 at http://name.umdl.umich.edu/ACC6198.1926.011
• December 1927 at http://name.umdl.umich.edu/acc6198.1927.011

Rizal Day USA during the campaign period for Philippine independence

Today, 30th of December 2010, promptly at 7 o'clock this morning, His Excellency Benigno Simeon Cojuanco Aquino III, presided over the Rizal Day ceremonies at Luneta Park to mark the 114th death anniversary of national hero, Dr Jose Rizal.  As tradition dictates, he hoisted the giant Philippine flag with the assistance of top civilian and military authorities, laid a wreath of flowers at the foot of the hero's monument, and delivered a memorial message to the Filipino people. 

It's not a holiday today however. PNoy moved it earlier to last Monday, 27th December, and we doubt if the citizenry even considered giving a pause for Rizalian reflection that day before they resumed their planned activities for the extended Christmas weekend.

Except for the Luneta rites, the only other Rizal Day celebration we know of is the city fiesta of Olongapo City.  It's always been called 'Rizal Day' although we doubt if there is anything commemorative of the hero's sacrificial death amidst the noise and fun in the auditorium and around the festive food tables of the city households. 

Rizal Day on December 30 was an eventful day among Filipinos here and abroad before the Americans restored our independence on the 4th of July in 1946.  Records show that they celebrated in grand fashion with parades, dinners and other commemorative programs. 

It could be that Rizal Day morphed into the 4th of July, later replaced by the 12th of June, independence day celebrations.  In the pre-World War II days (peacetime to the old generation), Filipinos had no big historical event to commemorate (did we win the war against the Spaniards? the Americans?) yet.  As residents of an American territory, they celebrated the holidays of their colonizers.

It was a lingering veneration of Jose Rizal, and a vintage decree issued by Emilio Aguinaldo of the short-lived Philippine Republic on 20th December 1898 that kept Filipinos observed Rizal Day with pomp and ceremony here and abroad during the first four decades of the 1900s.

The Philippine Republic, a magazine that was set up by Americans to help in the Philippine independence campaign, left us records of 'how Rizal Day was celebrated in the United States'.  From issues of 1925 to 1928, we read accounts of how Filipinos in various cities in the United States, in Japan, and even Argentina kept the memory of Jose Rizal alive.

Our survey of the Rizal Day programs during those years show the following common elements --

• Recitation of "Mi Ultimo Adios"/"My Last Farewell", sometimes with a piano accompaniment;
• Musical entertainment featuring Filipino bands, orchestras, jazz groups, string quartets;
• Musical numbers from Filipino and guest American singers and instrumentalists (pianists, violinists, guitarists, etc) rendering classical and patriotic songs and compostions;
• Orations and speeches from guest speakers (pro-Independence Americans, visiting dignitaries from the Philippines, notable members of the sponsoring Filipino association);
• Recitation of Rizaliana (biography, poems and excerpts from his other literary works);
• Formal attire--the barong has not come of age yet; 
• Singing of two national anthems:  Star Spangled Banner and the Philippine National Anthem.

In some cities, there were Rizal Day Queens.  We also found a playlet of four scenes, the last a re-enactment of the execution in Bagumbayan, a table d'hote of dishes with Philippine names. 

There was a group of Filipino scholars there who called themselves The Philippines Collegians, probably because they were from the University of the Philippines doing graduate work in Harvard U.  Enrique Virata, Gregorio Zara, Juan Nakpil, and their colleagues--big names later in the Philippines--organized very formal Rizal Day programs.

Here are a few reminders of how Filipinos in America remembered national hero when they were there as pensionados or self-supporting students in the universities and colleges, World War 1 veterans who opted to stay and raise families there, adventurous Pinoys who came to work in the plantations of Hawaii and California and in the canneries in Alaska, and the first generation of Fil-Ams--US-born or innocent children yet when their parents migrated there. 

• Brooklyn, New York City, 1924.

The Filipino masons of "Gran Oriente Filipino" led the annual Rizal Day celebrations in Brooklyn, New York City. In this 1924 event, violin prodigy Ernesto Vallejo was 14 years old.

• Boston, Massachussetts, 1924.

In the Boston area, the Filipino World War 1 veterans were the leaders in the celebration of Rizal Day.

•  Los Angeles, California, 1924.

The Filipino Association of Southern California called this a Rizal Day meeting, and from the program, it looked like it was a music concert.

•  Washington DC, 1925.

In this Washington DC Rizal Day, Mrs Claro M Recto, soprano, a music student in Washington at that time rendered a vocal solo.

• Detroit, Michigan, 1925.

What's remarkable in this celebration is the table d'hote consisting of, among others, Malolos Salad with Philippine Islands Dressing,  Biak-na-Bato Ice Cream, Balintawak Cakes and Bagumbayan Coffee.  The Philippine Revolution on the table, indeed!

• San Diego, California, 1925.

This program tells us that the Filipinos in the United States Navy at that time were not only cooks and stewards but also musicians. 

•   Salinas, California, 1925.

This 1925 Rizal event was a three-day celebration.  Other cities also had Rizal Day Queens.

•  Seattle, Washington, 1925.

The chairman of the executive board of the Filipino Council of Seattle in 1925, and the toastmaster for that year's Rizal Day celebration was Victorio C. Edades, who was working his way through fine arts schooling in the city.  Victorio Edades would become a National Artist of the Philippines.

•  Crane College, Chicago, Illinois, 1926.

Every year the Crane College Filipino Club was among several Chicago-based associations that organized Rizal Day activities.  The picture tells us that Philippine music was very much part of the commemorative program.

Sources of pictures and information:

•  The Philippine Republic ( 1925-1927 issues).  Retrieved from the University of Michigan Digital Library Collection, The United States and its Territories, 1870-1925: Age of Imperialism at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/philamer/