Rizal and 'Tsismis"

 By Ambeth R. Ocampo

Urban legends are like amoeba: They divide and multiply. The urban legend about Rizal being the father of Adolf Hitler, for example, is easily dispatched by counting back nine months, from April 20, 1889, from the birth of Alois Schicklgruber. Nine months before Hitler was born in the town of Braunau am Inn, Austria, Rizal was researching in the British Library in London. If you think that the Rizal-Hitler association is dispelled by logic, reason, or plain common sense, you will be surprised that it spawned another urban legend—that Rizal is Jack the Ripper. The Ripper murders were accomplished with a sharp knife, probably a scalpel, that indicated the murderer was a doctor, or had medical training. Rizal fit that to a tee. Rizal was known to frequent an area where one of the victims was found. He was in London when the murders occurred, and when he traveled to Paris to have his second book—an annotated edition of the 1609 “Sucesos de las islas Filipinas”—published, the Ripper murders stopped. One of my bright students even said that we have missed the biggest clue of them all—Jose Rizal and Jack the Ripper share the same initials—J.R.

I grew up on Rizal fables now since disproven: throwing his slippers in the river to be found and be useful to someone else downstream; that he invented champorado by accidentally spilling a cup of chocolate into his breakfast of tuyo (sardinas secas) and rice; that he said anyone who doesn’t appreciate his native language is worse than a beast or a stinking fish (masahol pa sa hayop at malansang isda), etc. But in his lifetime, he was already the stuff of legend. He was not just a physician but a magician whose walking stick did wondrous deeds. People did not understand Rizal’s cures medically; they believed them miraculous. Instead of knowing that Rizal was one of the few trained ophthalmic surgeons in Southeast Asia at the time, they saw him as someone Christ-like for giving sight to the blind.