UNFORTUNATE
PHILIPPINES
Jose Rizal
After
the earthquakes of 1880 which left no building intact in Manila as well as in
the provinces; after a horrible fire which reduced to ashes the most centrical,
most beautiful, most animated, and riches street of the city; after the
cholera, that devastating plague that made so many orphans and widows, that
afflicted so many hearts, plunging families once happy into loneliness and
tears; it seemed that Heaven ought to be satisfied already with the prostration
and mourning of that unfortunate colony so cruelly punished.
What
more could be demanded of a country where the groans and lamentations of the
few who have survived still were being heard, where the church bells have not
yet ceased their funeral ringing; where mother earth, satisfied with the
corpses of those who at one time were happy parents or affectionate children,
sustained only feeble convalescents or anguished specters wandering amidst
solitude and misery?
The
unfortunate Filipino who has seen in a few hours those dear to his heart
disappear one by one, who has heard the weeping and contemplated the horrors of
so terrible a calamity, back to life, hoped to occupy the old home of his lost
parents, concentrating all his love, all his tenderness in what had served as
shelter to his family for so long a time. The faint hoped that remained to him
in order to live disappeared and evaporated in a few moments. A frightful
cyclone never before seen since 1831 deprived him of his home, of the poor
roof, that sheltered him. Without family, homeless, loveless! Are there
perchance-greater misfortune and misery?
It
seems incredible that so many calamities should occur at one time in such a
short period of time.
We
cannot describe in all its nakedness the horrible picture those Islands would
present. What at one time called Pearl of the Orient, that greeted the traveler
like a dear person, waving palms and with an exclamation of love and
endearment, that was discerned in the distance, smiling and brilliant like a
dream, covered with a mantel of flowers, the land of springs and cascades,
today is a cemetery, a heap of ruins, a picture of misery and desolation.
From
these happy regions we cannot appreciate the extent of those almost Biblical
misfortunes, for imagination is puny before the immensity of the catastrophes
that annihilate and crush her. The newspapers that we have received bring the
unhappy news that break the heart and hurt even those who like us are accustomed
to similar spectacles. And notwithstanding, reality is never describable.
However,
in order to give some slight idea of the destruction wrought by the typhoon we
quote from a newspaper the following:
All
churches were destroyed.
Of
the theatres one has remained with the stage only, and the others have not left
the slightest sign of their existence.
An
entire district has not even one house standing. (From Divisoria to
Dulumbayan).
All
the trees on the promenade of the isthmus of Magallanes are uprooted. The
rivers swelled and the waters flooded the highest streets of the capital,
reaching above the ankles on the Escolta.
Besides
destroying all the houses of stone and galvanized iron, there was the case of a
house whose roof was blown away whole.
The
minute hand of the clock on the tower of St. Agustine Church, due to the force
of the wind, turned around the whole circle in the opposite direction.
The
volutes and solid columns of Colgante Bridge were cracked.
The
palaces of Malacanang, of the vice-governor, of the archbishop, and other
public buildings, were either blown down or rendered inhabitable and ruined.
The
iron sheets torn from the roofs gyrated in the air like a thin leaf of paper,
but killed several passers-by.
Twelve
barges loaded with rice foundered.
The
following craft ran aground: Two English boats and a frigate; two German boats;
one American frigate, one steamer and one boat; a Norwegian brig; one Swedish
boat; and the Spanish boats Teresa and Maria.
On
the river there were considerable collisions causing much damage.
A
resident of Ermita exclaimed: "The bowsprit of an American frigate
demolished my house."
In
the face of those fatal misfortunes that our brothers beyond the seas are suffering;
before these terrible calamities that have befallen our beautiful Archipelago,
as if fateful destiny takes a delight in conspiring eternally against those
islands; before these dismal considerations of the havoc wrought by a chain of
fire, earthquake, cholera, and typhoon in that poetic land; we emerge from our
habitual retreat to the platform of the press in order to invoke public
philanthropy so that the whole Peninsula with its never denied generosity
hasten to alleviate the unfortunate lot of her daughters, Cuba and the
Philippines.
We
hope then that the noble heart of the Iberian people, which will not remain
deaf to the voice of charity, through a national subscription and certain
amusements prepared ad hoc, knock at the doors of its homes in demand
for help, for alms, for the unfortunate peoples of Columbus and Magellan.