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Although we had the world’s most useless portable GPS (places of interest: Shopwise, Jollibee…) our trip from Makati to Pinto Art Museum in Antipolo took just half an hour in the light holiday traffic. After a good lunch at the Pinto Cafe (run by Bizu, have the evil chocolate souffle), we visited the permanent collections and then the Ciento Cincuenta exhibition celebrating the 150th birthday of our national hero, Jose Rizal.

We especially liked this piece by Leo Abaya: Di kailangang madaling maupos ang kandilang maliwanag ang apoy (The candle with the bright flame need not burn out quickly). Yes it’s a candle the height of a short man, with a bowler on top.

Sculpture by Daniel de la Cruz

Mixed media thingummy by Mark Justiniani

The humidity was off the charts so we fled into the car (air-conditioning) before we dissolved completely. As long as we were in Antipolo we decided to look for suman. We drove around town for half an hour but did not spot a single suman vendor. However we found lots of chicken-to-go stands and siopawan, and what we could only assume was a gay bar near the capitol. As the gay bar was still closed at 2.30 pm, we had ice cream instead. The McDonald’s in Antipolo is the nicest we’ve ever been in, much nicer than the ones in Makati.

We got back just in time for Ambeth’s talk on Rizal: History and Re-presentation. Ambeth gives the most fascinating lectures—he ropes you in with historical chismis and trivia, and before you know it you’re poring through the archives to satisfy your curiosity. (In a previous Rizal talk I had learned that Andres Bonifacio, the action man, was a stick figure while Jose Rizal, the nerd, was quite fit from doing weights.)

Ambeth opened his talk with photos of Rizal monuments, including this arresting tableau in Catbalogan: naked men hoisting a bust of the national hero.

We learned, among other things, that there are many fake photographs of Rizal’s execution at Bagumbayan. To check if the photo is authentic, look for the dog Isagani, mascot of the firing squad. Bagumbayan used to be killing fields during the Spanish colonial regime—on Sundays crowds gathered to watch executions. If you woke up late you could still drop by after lunch: the corpses were on view till 2pm.

Ambeth showed us archival photos of criminals being garroted. He quoted Teodoro Agoncillo’s statement that Philippine history really begins in 1872 with the execution by garrote of the priests Gomez, Burgos and Zamora. Before that there was only Spanish history. Ambeth noted that when Gomburza were executed Rizal was a child of 11 and Bonifacio, Mabini, Jacinto, Aguinaldo, Luna, del Pilar were all below the age of 10.

Gomez, Burgos and Zamora were buried in Paco Cemetery. At one point cemetery management had attempted to build a ladies’ lavatory on top of their graves.

After the Spanish era Bagumbayan the killing fields became Luneta/Rizal Park. A town in Germany presented the Philippines with a drinking fountain from which Rizal had drunk. It’s in Luneta to this day, but nobody knows what it is.

Rizal’s mortal remains are in the crypt under the Rizal monument—all except one of his vertebrae, which is in a reliquary at Fort Santiago. Rizal family tradition holds that it was chipped by a bullet from the firing squad. A DNA test would determine if it really is Rizal and not, say, a lechon.

There are many pictures of Rizal’s mom Teodora Alonzo with his skull. In fact there are many pictures of Jose Rizal, who always knew he would be famous. There are only two of his brother Paciano: one in his casket when he could hardly protest, and one in front of what appears to be a table but is really the ass of a 200-pound aunt diverting his attention from the camera.

Ambeth also talked about the competition to design the Rizal monument. It was won by a Swiss sculptor named Kissling, who had also designed a monument for William Tell, whose legend Rizal had translated into Tagalog. Rizal also translated five of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, including Ang pangit na sisiw ng pato.

The manuscript of El Filibusterismo was stolen from the National Archives in the 1960s and held hostage for Php500,000. This was bargained down to Php5,000. The thief was the janitor, who claimed that he’d read Rizal’s manuscript with tears in his eyes. Probably because he could not read Spanish.

If the Noli and Fili manuscripts fell out of the sky and landed on our lap we could not read them. Thanks to knee-jerk nationalism we never learned Spanish and are effectively cut off from the work of our national hero.