The Choice That Changed a Nation: Understanding Jose Rizal Beyond the Holiday

On December 30, 1896, a man walked calmly toward execution in what is now Luneta Park, Manila. His pulse was reportedly normal. His name was Jose Rizal, and his decision that morning—not to flee when escape was possible—would reshape the trajectory of an entire nation. Yet today, more than a century later, many Filipinos know him merely as a December 30 holiday, a convenient day off sandwiched between year-end festivities. The man himself has become a distant symbol, his actual significance buried under layers of time and, paradoxically, national veneration.

The real story of Rizal is not one of inevitable martyrdom, but of deliberate choice. Understanding that choice requires looking at the life and works of Rizal with fresh eyes—not as a saint, but as a thinking man caught between conflicting visions of liberation.

The Path He Refused

Rizal did not stumble into his death. Months before his execution, rescue was offered. The Katipunan, a secret society pushing for armed revolution, sent emissaries. Andres Bonifacio himself extended an invitation: join us, help lead this uprising. Rizal declined both offers, and his reasoning reveals the tension that would define his final years.

He believed the Philippines was not ready. Resources were scarce, his countrymen unprepared for full-scale conflict. To proceed would mean rivers of unnecessary blood spilled. This assessment was pragmatic, perhaps even pessimistic, but it reflected a deeper philosophical divide: Rizal and the Katipunan wanted the same freedom, but imagined different paths to reach it.

Rizal sought liberation through reform—change within the existing system. The Katipunan pursued independence through revolution—a complete break from Spain. The propagandist movement he had led with his pen and publications had already planted seeds of national consciousness. Yet when the revolution finally erupted, Rizal publicly condemned it. In a manifesto dated December 15, 1896, just days before his death, he wrote with unmistakable clarity: he abhorred the uprising’s methods and rejected any association with it.

This apparent contradiction puzzled many then and confuses observers now. How could a man inspire revolution while denouncing it? The answer lies in understanding what Rizal actually represented and what he hoped to prevent.

The Incomplete Revolutionary

Historian Renato Constantino’s 1972 analysis, Veneration Without Understanding, captures this paradox with precision. Constantino described Rizal as a “limited” Filipino—not as an insult, but as an observation. Rizal was an ilustrado, an educated Filipino of Spanish-influenced tastes who believed in reason, reform, and gradual progress. He admired European art, liberal ideas, and initially held that assimilation with Spain was not just possible but desirable.

Yet Rizal’s lived experience repeatedly contradicted this worldview. When his family faced the Calamba land dispute with Dominican friars, when he encountered racism and injustice firsthand, his belief in peaceful assimilation began to crack. By 1887, writing to Ferdinand Blumentritt, he admitted what his early idealism had denied: “The Filipino has long wished for Hispanization and they were wrong in aspiring for it.”

What Constantino found remarkable was not that Rizal changed his mind, but that he remained, throughout his life, what might be called “consciousness without movement.” He exposed oppression brilliantly through his novels and writings. He awakened national consciousness through his works. Yet he hesitated before the revolutionary moment itself.

But here’s the crucial insight: that consciousness mattered enormously. When Constantino reflected on Rizal’s actual impact, he wrote that the original aim—to raise Filipinos to the level of Spanish civilization so the Philippines could be absorbed as a Spanish province—“was transformed into its opposite.” The very tools Rizal used for reform catalyzed separation instead. The propaganda gave root to national identity. The drive for Hispanization became the foundation of distinct Filipino consciousness.

When a Man Becomes More Than Himself

The question of whether the revolution would have occurred without Rizal is ultimately unanswerable, but the evidence suggests it would have been fundamentally different. Without his intellectual groundwork, without the life and works of Rizal circulating through society, the uprising might have remained fragmented, local, incoherent. His execution unified disparate movements and gave them moral clarity.

Historian Ambeth Ocampo described Rizal’s bearing before death in Rizal Without the Overcoat (1990): a quiet, peaceful man who “willfully and calmly walked to his death for his convictions.” Ocampo termed him a “conscious hero” because Rizal was deliberate and aware of the consequences of every decision. This was not a man stumbling into heroism but one who walked toward it with open eyes.

In a letter written in 1882, Rizal explained his own reasoning: “Moreover I wish to show those who deny us patriotism that we know how to die for our duty and for our convictions. What matters death if one dies for what one loves, for one’s country and for those whom he loves?”

He chose death not because it was noble in the abstract, but because remaining alive and betraying his principles would have been a deeper death—a death of conviction, a death of integrity. That distinction matters.

The Hero America Preferred

After the revolution succeeded, the United States occupied the Philippines as a colonial power. Historian Theodore Friend noted in Between Two Empires that American administrators favored Rizal precisely because he was the “safer” hero. Aguinaldo was too militant, Bonifacio too radical, Mabini too uncompromising. Rizal, by contrast, represented reform rather than rupture—a figure whose legacy could be incorporated into American colonial narratives without threatening the new order.

Constantino was blunt about this: they “favored a hero who would not run against the grain of American colonial policy.” The irony is profound: a man who refused revolutionary violence became the symbol preferred by occupiers who sought order above all else. His genuine legacy was obscured by convenient interpretation.

What Remains to Be Done

Yet national heroism requires no official constitutional designation. Rizal’s significance endures independent of institutional recognition. But Filipinos today face a choice: continue to sanctify him as an untouchable saint, or humanize him as a complicated man facing impossible choices—and thereby learn from his example rather than merely venerate it.

Constantino posed the question elegantly in an essay titled Our Task: To Make Rizal Obsolete. What he meant was this: Rizal’s example remains relevant only as long as corruption, injustice, and oppression persist. Once those conditions are truly overcome—once Filipinos stand collectively against temptation and pressure as Rizal did individually—then his symbolic role is complete. His legacy will have done its work. There will be no need for historical figures to inspire conscience because conscience will be embedded in the society itself.

The Philippines is demonstrably far from that point. Corruption remains endemic. Injustice continues to flourish. In such a context, Rizal’s refusal to betray his ideals, his willingness to sacrifice personal safety for principle, speaks directly to the present moment. The question is not whether Rizal matters today—it is whether Filipinos will listen to what he actually represents.

On December 30, the nation gathers to remember a date and a name. The opportunity exists to go deeper: to understand not just how Rizal died, but why he refused to save himself. That understanding might be the most urgent lesson of all.