The 10 Greatest Self-Made Men in Philippine History (Part 2 of 2)

Yester­day, we had num­bers 10–7 of the our list of The 10 Great­est Self-Made Men in Philip­pine His­tory.

They are:
10) Pres­i­dent Ramon Magsaysay
9) Sen­a­tor Ninoy Aquino
8) Pres­i­dent Fer­di­nand Mar­cos
7) Sen­a­tor Manny Villar

If you haven’t read the first part of the arti­cle, click here.

While #s 10–7 are lumi­nar­ies of the polit­i­cal world, the rest of the list come from other spheres of Philip­pine soci­ety. We con­tinue with the rest of the Top 10…

6) Manny Pangili­nan (born July 14, 1946)

Manny V. Pangili­nan (or MVP as many peo­ple call him) is widely rec­og­nized for his out­stand­ing achieve­ment in busi­ness and his com­mit­ment in the aca­d­e­mic, char­i­ta­ble, arts and cul­ture, sports and health communities.

But, unknown to many, Mr. Pangili­nan came from hum­ble begin­nings and had to get by with mea­ger means to sup­port his edu­ca­tion. His is a sub­tle rags to riches story. Work­ing from the ground up, he used to be a sales trainee trav­el­ing to remote parts of Min­danao just to sell prod­ucts. In search of bet­ter career oppor­tu­ni­ties, he worked as an over­seas con­tract worker in Hong Kong in 1981.

As fate would have it, it was dur­ing his stay in Hong Kong that his lead­er­ship abil­ity was first put to the test. He was tasked to build an invest­ment firm that, in the begin­ning, only employed a few peo­ple in a small office space with a small cap­i­tal to start off with. This firm would then become First Pacific, a Hong-Kong based con­glom­er­ate, the port­fo­lio of which includes Ind­o­foods, the largest food com­pany in Indone­sia, and Philip­pine Long Dis­tance Tele­phone Com­pany (PLDT), the lead­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pany in the Philippines.

Presently, aside from being the Man­ag­ing Direc­tor and CEO of First Pacific, Mr. Pangili­nan is also the chair­man of PLDT, Smart Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Metro Pacific Cor­po­ra­tion, Landco Pacific Cor­po­ra­tion, among others.

Hon­ored as “Man­age­ment Man of the Year” for 2005 by the Man­age­ment Asso­ci­a­tion of the Philip­pines led by its pres­i­dent and the Credit Suisse First Boston man­ag­ing direc­tor Simon Roces Paterno, MVP has brought the Philip­pine Long Dis­tance Tele­phone Co. (PLDT) to undis­puted lead­er­ship as the country’s most prof­itable enter­prise. MVP also donated a brand-new Manuel Pangili­nan build­ing to his alma mater, the Ate­neo de Manila Uni­ver­sity, which shall house all the stu­dent orga­ni­za­tions of the school.

PLDT assis­tant vice pres­i­dent Raul Alvarez said: “Pangili­nan has trans­formed PLDT into a leaner, more dynamic and aggres­sive orga­ni­za­tion with higher rev­enues, bet­ter ser­vices to the pub­lic and lower costs. He is a remark­able busi­ness leader and an inspi­ra­tion for all.” Manny Pangili­nan is also the big boss of Hong Kong-listed First Pacific Group, the multi­na­tional group with suc­cess­ful ven­tures in Asean and China.

Indeed, the for­mer sales trainee who trav­eled the moun­tains of Bukid­non has come a long way.

5) Henry Sy (born Decem­ber 25, 1923)

Henry Sy is the founder and chair­man of SM Prime Hold­ings, the largest retailer in the Philip­pines. He earned his Asso­ciate of Arts degree in Com­mer­cial Stud­ies at Far East­ern Uni­ver­sity in 1950. Acknowl­edged as the country’s “Retail King,” he started with a mod­est shoe store he set up in Quiapo in 1946. Now, he has become Asia’s biggest shop­ping mall oper­a­tor with 30 malls through­out the Philippines.

Bestowed with the first ever “Father of Philip­pine Retail­ing Indus­try” title by the Philip­pine Retail­ing Asso­ci­a­tion last year, Sy has been buck­ing the odds of cor­rupt pol­i­tics, high world oil prices and eco­nomic slow­down by steadily increas­ing his diverse invest­ments in new shop­ping malls, bank­ing, tourism ven­tures and even in blue-chip pub­lic com­pa­nies like San Miguel Cor­po­ra­tion. He is an immi­grant rags-to-riches taipan who is not ashamed of his hum­ble begin­nings. He also envi­sions SM Group to rival the west­ern retail giants in the vast China mar­ket with ambi­tious projects.

He is now the Philip­pines’ rich­est man, gain­ing 1.4 bil­lion dol­lars in 2007, amid the global finan­cial cri­sis. The huge gain was due to his hold­ing com­pany, SM Invest­ments Corp., which has inter­ests in Banco de Oro and Uni­ver­sal Bank. Forbes magazine’s 2008 list of 40 wealth­i­est Fil­ipinos, revealed the Sy family’s net worth was 3.1 bil­lion dol­lars. Ear­lier, he was the 2^nd wealth­i­est indi­vid­ual in the Philip­pines, next to Lucio Tan and (as of 2008) 843^rd in the world. Sy is con­sid­ered a Tai-Pan or tycoon of Asia. As of 2006, Forbes mag­a­zine ranked him as the 14^th rich­est per­son in South­east Asia; “Henry Sy and fam­ily” is ranked the 74^th rich­est in the “Asia and Aus­tralia” region, and 512^th rich­est in the world.

Sy is the owner of Banco de Oro, Uni­ver­sal Bank, and China Bank­ing Corporation.[citation needed] In 2006, he bought the remain­ing 66% of Equi­table PCI Bank, the Philip­pines 3^rd largest lender, in which he already had a 34% stake, and merged it with Banco de Oro Uni­ver­sal Bank in 2007.[citation needed] The merger cre­ated the Philippines’s sec­ond largest finan­cial insti­tu­tion with resources of close to $17billion dollars.[citation needed] The Sy fam­ily has a per­sonal stake of $4 bil­lion in these 3 banks. Mr. Sy has recently sold his 11% stake in San Miguel Cor­po­ra­tion, South­east Asia’s largest food and bev­er­age con­glom­er­ate for $680 million.

From the man who sold shoes (SM means SHOE MART), Henry Sy is now promis­ing a world of expe­ri­ence: “Here at SM, we’ve got it all, for you.”

4) Andres Boni­fa­cio (Novem­ber 30, 1863 – May 10, 1897)

Andres Boni­fa­cio was a Fil­ipino rev­o­lu­tion­ary leader and one of the main lead­ers of the Philip­pine Rev­o­lu­tion against Span­ish colo­nial rule in the late 19^th cen­tury. He is regarded as the “Father of the Philip­pine Rev­o­lu­tion”.

Boni­fa­cio was born to a Taga­log father, San­ti­ago Boni­fa­cio, and a Span­ish mes­tiza mother, Catalina de Cas­tro of Zam­bales, in Tondo, Manila. His father was a cabeza de barangay (a lead­ing barangay offi­cial), who also worked as a boat­man around the Pasig to aug­ment the fam­ily income. His mother died of tuber­cu­lo­sis in 1881 and his father fol­lowed suit a year after. Accord­ing to pop­u­lar anec­dote, he ped­dled canes and fans to sup­port his family.

He bought books and self-studied. His favorites were books on the French Rev­o­lu­tion, The Lives of the Pres­i­dents of the United States of Amer­ica, Vic­tor Hugo’s Les Mis­er­ables (which he trans­lated into Taga­log), and Jose Rizal’s Noli me Tan­gere and El Fil­i­bus­ter­ismo. It was these books that gave him ideas about lib­erty and equal­ity and influ­enced his deci­sions later on in life.

He learned Eng­lish and worked as a clerk and sales agent for Flem­ing and Com­pany, a British trad­ing firm, then learned a lit­tle Ger­man before trans­fer­ring to Fres­sell and Com­pany, a Ger­man firm.

In 1896, Boni­fa­cio founded the Katipunan (The Soci­ety or The Gath­er­ing) with a few oth­ers. The men agreed to secretly pre­pare for an armed revolt which aimed to gain inde­pen­dence from Spain. It insin­u­ated itself into the com­mu­nity by set­ting up mutual aid soci­eties and edu­ca­tion for the poor. By the time the soci­ety was uncov­ered, the Amer­i­can writer James Le Roy esti­mated the strength of the Katipunan at 100,000 to 400,000 members.

Boni­fa­cio pro­claimed Philip­pine inde­pen­dence on August 23, 1896 in a meet­ing where the Katipuneros in atten­dance decided to start the armed upris­ing and tore their cedu­las (res­i­dence cer­tifi­cates and iden­tity papers) as a sign of their com­mit­ment to the rev­o­lu­tion. The Katipuneros also agreed to attack Manila on August 29.

But Span­ish civil guards dis­cov­ered the meet­ing and the first bat­tle occurred with the Bat­tle of Pasong Tamo. While the Katipunan ini­tially had the upper hand, the Span­ish civil guards turned the fight around. Boni­fa­cio and his men retreated toward Marik­ina via Balara (now in Que­zon City). They then pro­ceeded to San Mateo (in the province now called Rizal) and took the town. The Span­ish, how­ever, regained it three days later. After regroup­ing, the Katipuneros decided not to attack Manila directly but agreed to take the Span­ish pow­der mag­a­zine and gar­ri­son at San Juan.

On August 30, the Katipunan attacked the 100 Span­ish sol­diers defend­ing the pow­der mag­a­zine in the Bat­tle of Pinagla­banan. About 153 Katipuneros were killed in the bat­tle, but the Katipunan had to with­draw upon the arrival of Span­ish rein­force­ments. More than 200 were taken pris­oner. At about the same time, Katipuneros in other sub­ur­ban Manila areas, like Caloocan, San Pedro de Tunasan (now Makati City), Pateros and Taguig, rose up in arms. In the after­noon of the same day, the Span­ish Gov. Gen. Camilo de Polavieja declared mar­tial law in Manila and the provinces of Cavite, Laguna, Batan­gas, Bula­can, Pam­panga, Tar­lac and Nueva Ecija. The Philip­pine Rev­o­lu­tion had begun.

In the course of the rev­o­lu­tion against Spain, a split devel­oped between the Magdi­wang fac­tion (led by Gen. Mar­i­ano Álvarez and Boni­fa­cio) and the Mag­dalo fac­tion (led by Gen. Bal­domero Aguinaldo, cousin of Gen­eral Emilio Aguinaldo), both sit­u­ated in Cavite.

At a con­ven­tion in Tejeros, Cavite, the rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies assem­bled to form a rev­o­lu­tion­ary gov­ern­ment. There, Boni­fa­cio lost his bid for the pres­i­dency of the rev­o­lu­tion­ary gov­ern­ment to Emilio Aguinaldo and instead was elected Sec­re­tary of the Inte­rior. When mem­bers of the Mag­dalo fac­tion tried to dis­credit him as une­d­u­cated and unfit for the posi­tion, Boni­fa­cio declared the results of the con­ven­tion as null and void, speak­ing as the Supremo of the Katipunan. Boni­fa­cio was later arrested upon orders of Gen. Aguinaldo and exe­cuted on May 10, 1897. Thus ended the exis­tence of the Katipunan, replaced by Aguinaldo’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary government.

A sad and vio­lent end to the Father of Philip­pine Revolution.

3) John Gokong­wei (born August 11, 1926)

I have writ­ten about him sev­eral times because he is one of my per­sonal heroes.

John Gokong­wei is the chair­man of JG Sum­mit Hold­ings, one of largest con­glom­er­ates in the Philip­pines. In 2005, his com­pany had spent $700 mil­lion of inter­nally gen­er­ated funds for buy­ing new air­craft for his air­line, Cebu Pacific Air, the sec­ond largest car­rier in the Philip­pines. From 2003 up to the present his tele­com arm Dig­i­tal Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Philip­pines spent nearly $800 mil­lion for its mobile unit Sun Cel­lu­lar which is the 3^rd largest mobile oper­a­tor in the Philip­pines as of 2008. He is cur­rently nego­ti­at­ing a $1 bil­lion takeover of UIC a prop­erty giant from Sin­ga­pore of which he owns in excess of 30%. UIC con­trols Sin­ga­pore Land one of the biggest prop­erty land­lord in Sin­ga­pore. Gokong­wei also owns Uni­ver­sal Robina Cor­po­ra­tion, largest man­u­fac­turer of snacks in the Philip­pines and the maker of the very suc­cess­ful C2 green tea drink in the coun­try. He also con­trols Robin­sons Land one of the biggest prop­erty con­cerns in the Philip­pines that oper­ates the Robin­sons Malls.

He was born into a wealthy Cebu-based fam­ily, orig­i­nally from China’s Fujian province. The fam­ily for­tune was lost when his afflu­ent father died. He started his busi­ness career dur­ing World War II, buy­ing and sell­ing rice, cloth and scrap metal.

I enjoin you to read his speech here so you can learn more about his story from his own perspective.

2) Manny Pac­quiao (born Decem­ber 17, 1978)

Manny Pac­quiao is cur­rently the WBC Light­weight Cham­pion. He is the for­mer WBC super feath­er­weight world cham­pion, IBF super ban­tamweight world cham­pion, and WBC fly­weight world cham­pion. He has also held the Ring Mag­a­zine titles for feath­er­weight and super feath­er­weight. For his achieve­ments, he became the first Fil­ipino boxer to win four world titles in four dif­fer­ent weight divi­sions. He is cur­rently rated by the Ring Mag­a­zine, Yahoo Sports, and is widely con­sid­ered by many as the #1 pound-for-pound boxer in the world.

Last Decem­ber 6, 2008, Pac­quiao faced Oscar De La Hoya at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, in a fight called The Dream Match. Pac­quiao asserted him­self over De La Hoya from the first round till the eighth round. De La Hoya’s cor­ner threw in the towel before the start of the 9^th round. Pac­quiao won via tech­ni­cal knockout.

Manny Pacquiao’s par­ents were sep­a­rated when he was young. They were left by his father to his mother, Dion­isia. He was born into dev­as­tat­ing poverty and was forced to work at a very young age after his father left the fam­ily for another woman.

Manny Pac­quiao worked in the hard­core streets of Gen­eral San­tos City sell­ing bread and other bak­ery goods. Those same streets helped in the devel­op­ment of the tough and relent­less indi­vid­ual we see in the ring today. Manny began fight­ing for a few dol­lars in the streets. These fights were bru­tal but soon Manny Pac­quiao gained a rep­u­ta­tion for being a very tough fighter, and show­ing incred­i­ble grit and deter­mi­na­tion when fight­ing oppo­nents that were much larger than him. Even at a young age Manny dis­played the speed and left handed power that has made him one of the most excit­ing box­ers of his era.

Manny Pacquiao’s mother how­ever was not a fan. She was very reli­gious and had hoped her son would join the priest­hood. Manny’s pop­u­lar­ity increased around the city and peo­ple began tak­ing notice of this scrawny kid with a ham­mer for a left hand. With­out per­mis­sion Manny set off to Manila to pur­sue his career with hopes of becom­ing a star in order to help his mother and family.

His time in Manila was not easy. He trained for hours and had to work just as hard to earn a liv­ing. Manny worked in con­struc­tion and also in the gym where he trained doing odd jobs which included jan­i­tor. Manny was unde­terred and reeled of an eleven fight win­ning streak before tast­ing defeat for the very first time in 1996 vs Rus­tico Tor­recampo who knocked Manny Pac­quiao out. This was a dev­as­tat­ing loss for Manny. The life of Manny Pac­quiao could have taken a dif­fer­ent turn after this period. He con­sid­ered quit­ting box­ing and going back home. The thoughts of going back as a fail­ure and to con­tin­ued and never end­ing poverty re-ignited Pac­man to fight again. And fight he did. He even­tu­ally won the WBC Fly­weight title over Chatchai Sasakul in the eighth round, then lost it in his sec­ond defense against Med­goen Singsurat or Med­goen 3K Bat­tery, via a third-round knock­out on a bout held at Nakhon Si Tham­marat, Thai­land. Tech­ni­cally, Pac­quiao lost the belt at the scales as he sur­passed the weight limit of 112 lbs (51 kg). Pac­quiao was grow­ing, lit­er­ally, in weight, and also as a boxer.

Pac­quiao went to the super ban­tamweight divi­sion of 122 lbs (55 kg), where he picked up the WBC Inter­na­tional Super Ban­tamweight title. He defended the title five times before his chance for a world title fight came. Pacquiao’s big break came on June 23, 2001, against IBF Super Ban­tamweight cham­pion Lehlo­honolo Led­waba. Pac­quiao stepped into the fight as a late replace­ment and won the fight by tech­ni­cal knock­out to become the IBF Super Ban­tamweight cham­pion on a bout held at MGM Grand, Las Vegas, Nevada. He defended this title five times and fought to a sixth-round draw against Agapito Sanchez in a bout that was stopped early after Pac­quiao received 2 headbutts.

Great fights came after that. He dom­i­nated Mex­i­can leg­end Marco Anto­nio Bar­rera, fought toe to toe with Juan Manuel Mar­quez, gored Erik Morales to sub­mis­sion twice, went up a weight class to fight WBC light­weight cham­pion David Diaz, before mak­ing Oscar dela Hoya quit lit­er­ally on his stool. He is about to fight British boxer Ricky Hat­ton in a fight on May 2 in yet another weight class.

Who would have thought that this scrawny lit­tle kid sell­ing bread in Gen­eral San­tos City would one day become the Best Fighter in the Planet?

Indeed as box­ing colum­nist Michael Katz once wrote, “He is on the cusp of becom­ing per­haps the great­est Asian fighter to con­quer the West since Genghis Khan.”

1) Jose Rizal (June 19, 1861 – Decem­ber 30, 1896)

At the age of 3, he learned the alpha­bet from his mother; at 5, while learn­ing to read and write, he already showed incli­na­tions to be an artist. He astounded his fam­ily and rel­a­tives by his pen­cil draw­ings and sketches and by his mold­ings of clay. At the age 8, he wrote a Taga­log poem, “Sa Aking Mga Kabata,” the theme of which revolves on the love of one’s lan­guage. In 1877, at the age of 16, he obtained his Bach­e­lor of Arts degree with an aver­age of “excel­lent” from the Ate­neo Munic­i­pal de Manila. In the same year, he enrolled in Phi­los­o­phy and Let­ters at the Uni­ver­sity of Santo Tomas, while at the same time took courses lead­ing to the degree of sur­veyor and expert asses­sor at the Ate­neo. He fin­ished the lat­ter course on March 21, 1877 and passed the Surveyor’s exam­i­na­tion on May 21, 1878; but because of his age, 17, he was not granted license to prac­tice the pro­fes­sion until Decem­ber 30, 1881. In 1878, he enrolled in med­i­cine at the Uni­ver­sity of Santo Tomas but had to stop in his stud­ies when he felt that the Fil­ipino stu­dents were being dis­crim­i­nated upon by their Domini­can tutors.

On May 3, 1882, he sailed for Spain where he con­tin­ued his stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­dad Cen­tral de Madrid. On June 21, 1884, at the age of 23, he was con­ferred the degree of Licen­ti­ate in Med­i­cine and on June 19,1885, at the age of 24, he fin­ished his course in Phi­los­o­phy and Let­ters with a grade of “excel­lent.” Hav­ing trav­eled exten­sively in Europe, Amer­ica and Asia, he mas­tered 22 lan­guages. These include Ara­bic, Cata­lan, Chi­nese, Eng­lish, French, Ger­man, Greek, Hebrew, Ital­ian, Japan­ese, Latin, Malayan, Por­tuguese, Russ­ian, San­skrit, Span­ish, Taga­log, and other native dialects. A ver­sa­tile genius, he was an archi­tect, artists, busi­ness­man, car­toon­ists, edu­ca­tor, econ­o­mist, eth­nol­o­gist, sci­en­tific farmer, his­to­rian, inven­tor, jour­nal­ist, lin­guist, musi­cian, mythol­o­gist, nation­al­ist, nat­u­ral­ist, nov­el­ist, oph­thalmic sur­geon, poet, pro­pa­gan­dist, psy­chol­o­gist, sci­en­tist, sculp­tor, soci­ol­o­gist, and the­olo­gian. He was an expert swords­man and a good shot.

At Hei­del­berg, the 25-year-old Rizal, com­pleted in 1887 his eye spe­cial­iza­tion under the renowned Prof. Otto Becker. There he used the newly invented opthal­mo­scope (invented by the famous Pro­fes­sor Helmholtz) to later oper­ate on his own mother’s eye. From Hei­del­berg, Rizal wrote his par­ents: “I spend half of the day in the study of Ger­man and the other half, in the dis­eases of the eye. Twice a week, I go to the bier­brauerie, or beer­hall, to speak Ger­man with my stu­dent friends.” He lived in a Karl­straße board­ing house then moved to Lud­wigsplatz. There, he met Rev­erend Karl Ullmer and stayed with them in Wil­hems­feld, where he wrote the last few chap­ters of “Noli Me Tangere”

A plaque marks the Hei­del­berg build­ing where he trained with Pro­fes­sor Becker, while in Wil­hems­feld, a smaller ver­sion of the Rizal Park with his bronze statue stands and the street where he lived was also renamed after him. A sand­stone foun­tain in Pas­tor Ullmer’s house gar­den where Rizal lived in Wil­hems­feld, stands.

In the hope of secur­ing polit­i­cal and social reforms for his coun­try and at the same time edu­cate his coun­try­men, Rizal, the great­est apos­tle of Fil­ipino nation­al­ism, pub­lished, while in Europe, sev­eral works with highly nation­al­is­tic and rev­o­lu­tion­ary ten­den­cies. In March 1887, his dar­ing book, NOLI ME TANGERE, a satir­i­cal novel expos­ing the arro­gance and despo­tism of the Span­ish clergy, was pub­lished in Berlin; in 1890 he reprinted in Paris, Morga’s SUCCESSOS DE LAS ISLAS FILIPINAS with his anno­ta­tions to prove that the Fil­ipinos had a civ­i­liza­tion wor­thy to be proud of even long before the Spaniards set foot on Philip­pine soil; on Sep­tem­ber 18, 1991, EL FILIBUSTERISMO, his sec­ond novel and a sequel to the NOLI and more rev­o­lu­tion­ary and tragic than the lat­ter, was printed in Ghent.

His drive to fight per­se­cu­tion must come from his mem­ory as a ten-year old of his mother’s treat­ment at the hands of the civil author­i­ties, with the approval of the Church prelates. The inci­dent stemmed from an accu­sa­tion that Rizal’s mother, Teodora, tried to poi­son the wife of a cousin when she claimed she only inter­vened to help. With­out a hear­ing she was ordered to prison in Santa Cruz in 1871, and made to walk the ten miles (16 km) from Calamba. She was released after two and a half years of appeals to the high­est court.

In 1887 he wrote a peti­tion on behalf of the ten­ants of Calamba and later that year led them to speak out against friar attempts to raise rent. They ini­ti­ated a lit­i­ga­tion which resulted in the fri­ars evict­ing them from their homes, includ­ing the Rizal fam­ily. Gen­eral Vale­ri­ano Weyler had the build­ings on the farm torn down.

By 1896, the rebel­lion fomented by the Katipunan (see story of Boni­fa­cio above) had become a full blown rev­o­lu­tion, prov­ing to be a nation­wide upris­ing and lead­ing to the first procla­ma­tion of a demo­c­ra­tic repub­lic in Asia. To dis­so­ci­ate him­self, Rizal vol­un­teered and was given leave by the Span­ish Gov­er­nor Gen­eral Ramon Blanco to serve in Cuba to min­is­ter to vic­tims of yel­low fever. Blanco later was to present his sash and sword to the Rizal fam­ily as an apology.

Rizal issued a man­i­festo dis­avow­ing the rev­o­lu­tion and declar­ing that the edu­ca­tion of Fil­ipinos and their achieve­ment of a national iden­tity were pre­req­ui­sites to free­dom. Rizal was arrested en route, impris­oned in Barcelona, and sent back to Manila to stand trial. He was impli­cated in the rev­o­lu­tion through his asso­ci­a­tion with mem­bers of the Katipunan and was to be tried before a court-martial for rebel­lion, sedi­tion, and con­spir­acy. Dur­ing the entire pas­sage, he was unchained, no Spaniard laid a hand on him, and had many oppor­tu­ni­ties to escape but refused to do so. Rizal was con­victed on all three charges and sen­tenced to death. Gov­er­nor Gen­eral Blanco, who was sym­pa­thetic to Rizal, had been forced out of office, seal­ing Rizal’s fate.

Moments before his exe­cu­tion by a fir­ing squad of Fil­ipino native infantry, backed by an insur­ance force of Span­ish troops, the Span­ish sur­geon gen­eral requested to take his pulse; it was nor­mal. Aware of this, the Span­ish sergeant in charge of the backup force hushed his men to silence when they began rais­ing ‘¡vivas!’ with the par­ti­san crowd. His last words were those of Jesus Christ: “con­sum­ma­tum est”,–it is finished.

Rizal never held a gun or sword in the bat­tle­field to fight for free­dom. This fact leads some to ques­tion his rank­ing as the nation’s pre­mier hero, with a few who believe in the beat­i­fi­ca­tion of Boni­fa­cio in his stead. In his defense, the his­to­rian, Rafael Palma, con­tends that the rev­o­lu­tion of Boni­fa­cio is a con­se­quence wrought by the writ­ings of Rizal and that although the sword of Boni­fa­cio pro­duced an imme­di­ate out­come, the pen of Rizal gen­er­ated a more last­ing achievement.

Go back to the first part of the arti­cle. Do you think I missed out on any­one in this list? Tell me what you think about it in the com­ments sec­tion below.