Rizal in America: He Was Not Impressed
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Rizal stayed at Palace Hotel upon completing quarantine aboard the ship that brought him to America (Source: Travel Weekly)
This was how Ateneo de Manila history professor and author of 35 books Ambeth Ocampo read some entries in Rizal’s 25 volumes of writing, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relationship between the Philippines and the U.S. last May 20, 2021.
The “Rizal in San Francisco” webinar was hosted by the Philippine Consulate in San Francisco with the National Commission for Culture and Arts and GMA Pinoy TV. It also marked the 160th birth and 150th death anniversary of Rizal, and was held to drum up interest in the Philippine diplomatic corps’ worldwide Sentro Rizal online program.
Ocampo’s focus “is not the dates” that students of history memorize but “the connections we make.” Consul General Neil Frank Ferrer also said that aside from “connecting the dots,” we can find out more about ourselves. Ocampo’s narratives certainly have more history than Gregorio F. Zaide’s school textbooks used by several generations of Filipinos.
Ambeth R. Ocampo (Source: IMDb)
Ocampo said Rizal further observed that after being quarantined, only First Class passengers were allowed to disembark and cargo unloaded. The Chinese and Japanese in Second and Third Classes were detained further. He complained in a letter to his family about being “excessively taxed” and that there were no epidemics in the ports of Hong Kong and Yokohama from where his ship sailed.
Ocampo explained that at the time, 1888, the Exclusion Act of 1882 was being expanded and targeted the Chinese. Fortunately, Rizal was typical of the educated ilustrado, who was well turned out and always traveled First Class. In fact, Ocampo opines, Rizal was closer to the old world European cosmopolitan than the new world trailblazers. Like the way “some of the French see Americans as arriviste.”
Getting out of quarantine, Rizal’s hectic itinerary began to read like a multicity train trip through Europe annually experienced by many Fil-Ams today. According to Ocampo, on May 6, 1888, Rizal took a ferry to Oakland, then a train to Benicia where the train was ferried to Sacramento. Then he had breakfast in Nevada on the seventh. The next day he changed trains, observed Mormons in Utah. On May 9, he woke up in Colorado, adjusting an hour forward. He recorded another bad trip because of a thieving white porter. Then it was Nebraska on May 10. He observed that the Missouri River was “twice the Pasig River.” In Chicago on May 11, he noted Indian statues in every tobacco shop.
“While Rizal thought “America was a promise land for those who work hard to better themselves,” he was not impressed by it.”
Ocampo said Rizal’s notes at this point were not as detailed as his travelogues from Europe. On May 12, he stopped to see Niagara Falls on the Canadian side. He wrote that “though not as pretty and mysterious as the Los Baños Falls it was bigger and more imposing.” On May 13, he moved on to Albany and passed the Hudson River “whose banks are pretty but lonelier than the Pasig River.” In New York City he stayed at a swanky hotel on 5th Avenue. Then on May 16, he went on to Liverpool.
Ocampo said San Francisco is “full of history waiting to be discovered by Filipinos.” For instance, just a few minutes’ walk from the [current] Consulate is Union Square where there’s a Dewey monument. To Filipinos who remember history aside from the former name of the bay front boulevard in Manila, Admiral George Dewey was the hero in the battle of Manila Bay on May 1, 1898 (actually in Cavite, according to Ocampo). But unknown to many Filipinos, Ocampo reveals, Dewey’s counterpart, Rear Admiral Patricio Montojo, was an ancestor of the Ayalas.
Ocampo related that Rizal also visited the Palace Hotel. The cognoscenti will tell you the Palace was San Francisco’s first luxury hotel. It has the indoor Garden Court with the Maxfield Parrish painting at the bar. At the exit of the Palace Hotel, a historic marker commemorates when the “Philippine national hero and martyr stayed at the Palace Hotel from May 4 to 6, 1888 in the course of his only visit to the United States.”
Ocampo said most of the U.S. troops that fought in the Philippine-American War embarked from the Presidio. Here, Ocampo found the Funston House, named after Major General Frederick Funston, who fought in that war (February 4, 1899 – July 2, 1902). Funston was responsible for the capture of Emilio Aguinaldo in 1901. The deceit of the Macabebe scouts is what Filipino students of history were taught. But Funston deserves the credit for planning and executing Aguinaldo’s capture. Mark Twain criticized Funston as an imperialist. In the 1906 earthquake, Funston declared martial law but didn’t have the authority to do it. His shoot-to-kill order killed more innocents than looters.
Ocampo also related his visit to the Newberry Independent Research Library in Chicago in 2000. The library houses a private collection of non-circulated and rare materials. There he was prompted to browse through Rizal’s handwritten notes, letters, and drawings. From history learned in Filipino schools, he had assumed that Rizal was exclusively an optical doctor. But Ocampo was surprised to find Rizal’s anatomical sketches and drawings of penises, some in syphilitic stages.
He said, Rizal’s purpose for traveling the world was to learn more and bring home knowledge, and may have felt guilty at its great cost to his family. Among his writings were Egyptian hieroglyphs, Hebrew and Arabic conjugations, and Japanese-style illustrations. Sadly, Ocampo said, nowadays “no one reads Rizal’s writings.”
Rizal was multilingual and he used this skill to write to his Austrian friend Ferdinand Blumentritt. Realizing the Spaniards were opening his letters, Ocampo said Rizal would write in English, French, Italian and even in 19th century German script, which not even many Germans can do today. Rizal translated William Tell from German to Tagalog and he was also familiar with pre-Spanish Baybayin.
The Jose Rizal plaque at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Rizal spent “10 years or 1/3 of his life traveling.” He traveled to Europe first in 1882 – 1887 to study. When he came back to the Philippines, Noli Me Tangere made him a person of interest to the Spanish authorities. So, the next year, he set out for America. Ocampo said that while Rizal thought “America was a promise land for those who work hard to better themselves,” he was not impressed by it. Rizal considered it a great country but with many defects; that “there were some cities that did not have real civil liberties.” Rizal noted the status of Blacks and that “(Americans) hated the Chinese and were confused by the Japanese because of ignorance.”
But for all his urbane European sensibilities, Rizal was still very Filipino. Although his family was affluent (they had sugar and rice lands), Rizal would complain about a steady diet of potatoes and ask when he would get his allowance, Ocampo said. Rizal once told brother Paciano to remit money through the Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corp. (HSBC), but Paciano thought Standard Charter’s rates were cheaper. At a time when Western Union was still barely in the telegraph and telephone business, Rizal’s family depended mostly on the kindness of strangers to get cash to Rizal; a vacationer traveling from Manila to Europe, perhaps, or a waiter serving on a ship. Padala (care packages) for Rizal would be “bihon, halayang mangga, bagoong and embroidered piña (rice noodles, mango jam, fermented shrimps, embroidered pine fabric).”
For the webinar “Rizal in San Francisco, Connections in the Philippines-U.S.” watch here: https://www.facebook.com/189510154424369/videos/515694009571781
Harvey Barkin is editor-in-chief at FilAm Star in San Francisco, correspondent for the San Jose Mercury News and content writer for an industry-specific newsletter. He is also a reporting fellow for campaigns and grant-funded projects. Previously, he was a correspondent for news portal BenitoLink, a tech writer for Silicon Valley start-ups and a book reviewer for Small Press in Rhode Island. His work has appeared in various media from advertising copy and collateral to B2B content and in various outlets from Valley Catholic to Inside Kungfu.
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