Jose Rizal Teaches Us The Heroic Business Of Inclusive Growth, Nay Development!

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Today, Monday, 30 December 2019, right after midnight of Sunday, discovering on the Internet the image above, the unfinished high-rise condominium Torre de Manila behind the National Hero monument at the Luneta[1], instantly I titled it, "Business Behind Bravery." So many flags! We did not know it – our National Hero Jose Rizal was so brave in life as in business, less with livestock and more with crops! 

Bolo-wielding Andres Bonifacio wanted to change the rulers; pen-wielding Jose Rizal wanted to change the rules. Bonifacio wanted to change the men who called the shots; Rizal wanted to change the minds of the ruled and the rulers, who should have called off at the Luneta those shots heard around the world. Bonifacio for Revolution, Rizal for Redemption. That is why I wrote and published in 2005 my book, indios bravos! Jose Rizal As Messiah Of The Redemption[2].

I really mean business this time. When Rizal was executed at the Luneta on 30 December 1896, among other things he was a teacher, farmer and gardener. He had earned a Bachelor of Agriculture degree from Ateneo Municipal de Manila[3]. He had been a Big Cultivator, working on 70 hectares plus in Dapitan where he was exiled as a subversive[4].

On the shores of Talisay near Dapitan, Rizal worked on lands with laborers and young pupils. His crops included 6,000 abaca plants, 1,000 coconut trees, much cacao, coffee, and many kinds of fruit trees; he had chickens. Rizal was less an Agriculturist, more a Horticulturist.

He wanted his family to live in Talisay, writing to his sister Trinidad[5]:

My land is half an hour's walk from the sea. The whole place is poetic and very picturesque, better than Ilaya River, without comparison. At some points, it is wide like the Pasig River and clear like the Pansol... There are dalag (fish) and pako (edible fern). If you and our parents come, I am going to build a large house where we can all live together.

Rizal as businessman introduced modern methods of growing crops he had observed in his travels in America and Europe:

He encouraged the Dapitan farmers to replace their primitive system of cultivation with... modern methods (consisting of) the use of fertilizers, the rotation of crops, and the use of farm machines. Rizal actually imported some farm machines from the United States.

Bernardo M Villegas says of him[6]:

Revealing my bias for rural and agricultural development, I would venture to say that (Rizal) would have been very active in bringing development to the small farmers and to the rural dwellers. We would have avoided the lack of inclusive growth... and the technological dualism in which advanced technology was employed in the large plantations for export-oriented crops while the rest of the agricultural sector (especially rice, corn and coconut) stagnated at the carabao-and-plow stage.

When the Spaniards executed him, the world lostmore than a scholar and a dreamer – it lost a Visionary Agriculturist and Horticulturist!@517





[1]https://politics.com.ph/bam-backs-up-businessman-in-torre-debate/
[2]http://frankahilario.blogspot.com/2005/11/filipinos-redeem-yourselves-let-your_1935.html
[3]https://www.univie.ac.at/Voelkerkunde/apsis/aufi/rizal/craig11.htm
[4]https://prezi.com/hcza4vsjzcls/dr-jose-rizal-as-a-farmer/
[5]https://prezi.com/hcza4vsjzcls/dr-jose-rizal-as-a-farmer/
[6]http://thelifeandworksofrizal.blogspot.com/2011/12/jose-rizal-as-farm-entrepreneur.html

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