Jose Rizal and New York City

by Nestor Palugod Enriquez

 The 2010 blizzard is very mild when compared with the most famous snowstorm in American history, the Blizzard of 1888. It has acquired an almost legendary status. The White Hurricane caught New York by surprise with heavy snowfall and frigid lower temperatures. The blizzard’s combination of inclement conditions has been unmatched in human tolls. Rizal arrived in Manhattan just a couple of months later. The blizzard cancelled the scheduled Mark
Twain speaking engagement in the city. He was also worried about running out of cigars and not able to come home in Connecticut.

Marti described New York as ”a city silent, deserted, shrouded, buried under the snow.” But he also paid tribute to the courage and ingenuity of New Yorkers in coping with the great disaster. He witnessed the blizzard and rendered it in the language of Cervantes.  New York as ”a city silent, deserted, shrouded, buried under the snow.” But he also paid tribute to the courage and ingenuity of New Yorkers in coping with the great disaster. On March 14, The New York Times predicted, ”if New York recovers within a week it may consider itself in good luck.” Marti was more optimistic:

”For two days, the snow has had New York in its power, encircled, terrified, like a prize fighter driven to the canvas by a sneak punch. But the moment the attack of the enemy slackened, as soon as the blizzard has spent its first fury, New York, like the victim of an outrage, goes about freeing itself of its shroud.

Theodore Roosevelt, who lived in the East 60’s, trudged through the blizzard to keep an appointment with the librarian of the New-York Historical Society, which was then on East 11th Street. When he arrived, he learned that the librarian, less hardy, had not shown up. Roosevelt walked home and fired off a laconic note: ”I presume the blizzard kept you at home.” The note is part of the NY Historical Society.

Roosevelt could have been the Mayor of New York City, but he lost his previous bid. Just maybe the city could have recovered much better. His lost might have been blessing. The designer of the American empire was already writing and howling like the wind of the hurricane of 1888.

I just stage New York City the key players in history together. Roosevelt, Marti, and Rizal were not only gifted writers and members of the Mason brotherhood.  Jose Marti spurned for never participating in combat may have compelled Martí to that ill-fated suicidal two-man charge. Some of his “Versos sencillos” bore premonition:

“Que no me entierren en lo oscuro/ A morir como un traidor/ Yo soy bueno y como
bueno/ Moriré de cara al sol.” (” May they not bury me in darkness /
to die like a traitor / I am good, and as a good man / I will die facing the sun.”).

This was in 1895 on his first and only combat in Cuba after he left New York city. The other Jose took another route., the peaceful way, denied the revolution, sailed to Europe on his way to writing his second political novel, El Filibusterismo. He would be executed on December 30 eight years later after the blizzard but not before he wrote his Ultimo Adios, his last gift.

The Philippine American war would just follow the Splendid Little War produced by Roosevelt with Mark Twain on the side line cracking the only way he knew with his pen and his cigar in his mouth.      

Nestor Palugod Enriquez
www.filipinohome.com
Coming to America

Yesterday’s history, tomorrow’s a mystery.
Today is a gift,and that’s why we call it the present.
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J