Fort Santiago
Intramuros, Manila - November 25, 2011 Way back in the time of Columbus, before America was discovered, Europeans were crazy about spices. They loved seasoning their food with it -- nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves. They slathered their roasted animals with spices to impress their guests.

But spices were expensive. Only the wealthy can afford them. They were imported from the Moluccas (part of modern day Indonesia) and took a long way to reach Europe. By the time it reached Europe -- after middlemen and pirates jacked up the price -- one pound of nutmeg traded for seven oxen. Spices were the day’s equivalent of oil today. And so sea merchants schemed to find sea routes for importing the spices themselves, eliminating the middlemen, and striking it rich.

Christopher Columbus was one such scheming sea merchant. Sailing under the Spanish flag, he had to find a different route because the eastward passage (down the tip of Africa then turn left for the Indian Ocean) had already been discovered and owned by the Portuguese through its explorer, Vasco de Gama. Incursion by Spain on Portugal’s route meant a bloody battle at sea.

So with the widely held belief that the world was round, Columbus, hoping to reach the same Moluccas islands, sailed west. But instead he discovered America.

Believing that America was Asia, Columbus would sail no further. He searched for the Moluccas in the Caribbean and never found it. It was Ferdinand Magellan who, also sailing for the Spanish flag, later rounded the continent that Columbus discovered and crossed the Pacific to continue Spain’s quest for a westward passage.

Magellan, in turn, discovered the Philippines which he then claimed for Spain.

During the so-called “Age of Discovery” when long distance maritime travel became every country’s means of ascending to global power, the practice was for explorers -- or “discoverers” -- to fortify their encampments wherever in the world they may be by encircling them with impenetrable walls. They did this to protect themselves not just from the hostile natives but from fellow explorers, too, who would surely breach unprotected bastions.

When the Spanish government set itself up in the Philippines, the same fortification was created. A stone wall eight feet thick was constructed to surround its seat of power in Manila. The walled encampment was called, “Intramuros”, or translated from Latin, “within the walls”.

For three hundred years, the Philippines lay under the rule of Spain. That was a long time. Even if none of the atrocities that the natives alleged the occupying Spaniards committed happened, surely, a revolt was bound to happen.

Dr. Jose Rizal was one such revolutionary. A well-to-do Filipino intellectual and moderate who had been to Spain and seen better living conditions there, he wrote scathing literature aimed at pushing reforms locally. But instead of hearing Dr. Rizal's pleas for change, the local Spanish authorities saw him as incendiary, charged him with sedition, and sentenced him to die. Dr. Rizal spent his last days in a dungeon at Fort Santiago within the walled city of Intramuros never recanting a word he made in exchange for freedom until his death by firing squad.

Anyway, I thought I’d share this piece of history hopefully from an outsider’s perspective. I first learned about Dr. Rizal when I was in grade 3 elementary school and my perception of him has been cemented since. Even when my college history professor proposed alternate versions with elements like the Spice Trade, personal motivations by some of our heroes, that Rizal was chosen by the Americans as national hero because of his friendliness to the West, I found such views radical and, a romantcist at heart, I refused to relinquish my grade three, picture-perfect-patriotism impression of Dr. Rizal.

And come to think of it, penning a lengthy poem in his final hours to say goodbye to a country first and foremost, mention the hardships that its people endured for so long, and then say goodbye to his loved ones only as if in afterthought (without naming them as he did his country, the Philippines), pouring his heart out for the country of his birth and seemingly content to die in it at a young age (as opposed to dying somewhere else) -- forget the flowery scenes in his poem if you’re not into that sort of thing, just remember that it is the sum of the deliberate and intentioned parts that matter -- and then marching to his own death, as far as casting national heroes go, I'd say there are few, if any, in the world and throughout history, who could play the role better than Dr. Jose Rizal.

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