Letter to a Dead Patriot
José Rizal was executed by a Spanish firing squad on December 30, 1896, in Manila.
by Almira Astudillo Gilles
I was told to remember you and I search to the brink of my memory
for lessons from my childhood.
Growing up in Manila, streets bordered by mansions to the right,
shanties to the left, garbage everywhere,
I needed heroes, relied on hope, believed that Sisa had gone to heaven
and Padre Damaso to hell.
I even named my dog Indio.
I was told to remember you but there is no need for heroes
in the American suburbs where dogs eat better than the unhoused
flowerbed plantings change with seasons
and Target has a sale every weekend.
So I seek you in the city, desperate to find you.
The Newberry Library requires registration and a reason.
I tell them I am a compatriot seeking truth.
The tired receptionist has heard it all before
and she waves me inside with a manicured hand.
Your bronze bust stares at me, molded into a generic likeness
the lapel of your coat more animate than your eyes.
With hands encased in plastic gloves I do as you instruct:
Open a book to learn the past of a nation
to foretell its destiny.
Our destiny is printed in French, but still I press upon your words
languishing in solitary space, purple ink faded to gray.
I wonder
When you were prowling the streets of Madrid,
the flower markets of France, or
as a young child chasing your dog,
did you love your country then?
Did you see your people in
the eyes of coolies
quarantined on the Belgic,
miss Leonor or the scent of O-Sei-san, and
long for the heat of Calamba in Heidelberg?
Did the gaslights of London
remind you of your mother’s whisper
as you gazed at moths swirling around a flame—
those hapless moths innocent of their demise.
Did you foresee your own,
hoping for an equally glorious end?
Remembering you, I slip the gloves off my hands,
press the imprint of my fingertips
on crumbling pages, my sweat fusing with your stains,
sprinkles of my DNA spilling down the binding.
We allow ourselves such indulgences.
I am thinking of you
Jose Protacio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda,
martyr and poet.
Originally published in Remembering Rizal: Voices from the Diaspora (San Francisco: Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc. 2011).
Revised November 17, 2025
Almira Astudillo Gilles (almiragilles@gmail.com) describes her heart’s work as conservation in two areas: indigenous cultural heritage and natural resources. Her cultural heritage work includes a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation grant for Art and Anthropology Project: Portrait of the Object as Filipino, an international artist exchange. She was the founder of 10,000 Kwentos (“Stories”) at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, a model of direct community engagement with the museum’s Philippine ethnographic collection.
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