Jose Rizal's Green Ancestral House

Photo Credit: Miro Aguilar

(Philippine Daily Inquirer - 19 June 2009)

Being a Laguna native who was brought up and taught since my early years to admire and honor Laguna’s greatest son, Dr. Jose Protacio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda, I was aghast as I looked incredulously at this picture on the front page of Philippine Daily Inquirer on 19 June 2009 – the 148th birth anniversary of our national hero. How could they dare to repaint the historic Rizal ancestral house on Calamba’s Calle Real and turn it into a veritable green fondant cake? I wondered what the young Jose and his dog, Berganza, must have contemplated on as they stood there staring at their bahay na bato turned green. Even the deep well from where the Rizal family drew countless pails of water somewhere below the azotea was not spared. Could it have occurred to him that someday he would be reinvented by some government institution as an environmentalist and be honored as such by repainting their ancestral house green? Yet as an architect, while I was musing on this photograph, I was just as well amused with all its frivolity.

So whose bright idea was it to repaint Dr. Jose Rizal’s ancestral house green? The news report stated that the National Historical Institute (NHI), in all its zealousness, wanted to highlight the meaning of the national hero’s surname, Rizal – its root word being ricial which supposedly meant a green field ready for harvest. Hence the bright lime-green paint makeover with yellow for interior walls and blue for ceilings to match. But therein lays a fallacy. Green, in all its chromatic variations, hardly represents harvest in Laguna. Gold would be more like it if they were referring to rice harvest which, by the way, Calamba was not as known for. Sugarcane was what Don Francisco Mercado and the rest of the townsfolk planted their land with for which they had to pay rent to the Dominican friars who took it upon themselves to turn Calamba into a Dominican Hacienda – a friar sugar-estate – even if they could not show any proof of legal ownership. And then again if they were referring to sugarcane harvest, the color of choice should have been aubergine or deep purple which, I believe, would have horrified even more the Calambenos, the Lagunenses, and the Filipinos in general.

I have been trying to dig deep into my baul of architectural history and theories; yet I cannot seem to find any significant reference or allusion to any building or structure that was painted in such a manner as to highlight the origin of the owner’s surname. If this is an emerging architectural trend, can you just imagine what they might do to General Emilio Aguinaldo’s house in Kawit, Cavite? They just might send in a rappelling team that would wrap the historic house with reinforced polyethylene Christmas wrapper, not unlike what the celebrated Bulgarian-born American environmental artist Christo, and his wife, the French-born American Jeanne-Claude, did to Reichstag in Berlin or Kunsthalle in Bern or the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. And for the piece de resistance, oversized ribbons of red, green, and gold could then be tied all around the mysteriously wrapped structure so that the historic house would look like one big, well, aguinaldo. And what about Juan Luna’s house in Badoc, Ilocos Norte? Can you just imagine their crew painting the exterior burnt-orange brick-cladded walls of the tempestuous artist’s house with all sorts of moon figures and festooning its interiors with moon paraphernalia in order to highlight the surname’s lunatic origin? Well, of course, with Ninoy Aquino’s house at Times Street in Quezon City, they would not be able to do so much because, by default, they could only paint it yellow with, perhaps, some trimmings of yellow ribbons here and there. With Plaza Moriones in Tondo, Manila I presume they could just easily procure those brightly painted wooden angry-looking Roman soldier moriones masks from Marinduque to decorate the place. I dread to think what they might do to Plaza Dilao in Paco, Manila where once upon a time plants that produced amarillo or yellow dye were said to have flourished. And given a free rein, just what might they do to the historic walled city of Intramuros?

If the NHI’s over-riding concern is to preserve and conserve historical sites and monuments, do they really think this is the proper way to do it? Historical accounts state that Rizal’s ancestral house was confiscated by the Dominican friars sometime in 1890 because Don Francisco Mercado refused to pay the annual rent of twenty four pesos for the land that he tilled. The rent amount had been doubled from the previous year’s twelve pesos because he offended the friar-estate administrator by not giving him yet another turkey for his dinner. Don Francisco and the other townsfolk, who also refused to pay or had arrears with the Dominican Hacienda, were at once ordered to evict or dismantle their properties within twelve hours. Since the huge Rizal house could not be dismantled in half a day, the Rizal family just gathered whatever belongings they could bring with them as they left for Binondo in a hurry. Other accounts state that the confiscated properties were subsequently torched by the friars; while the menfolk, including Paciano Rizal, were arrested and deported to Jolo. It was quite unclear what fate befell the Rizal ancestral house.

Now the NHI is claiming that the present house is not really the original bahay na bato. It is actually a replica designed by Juan Nakpil, the first Filipino architect to become a National Artist; and built in the 1950s based on a vintage photograph, the remnants of the original stone foundation, and probably on the recollections of the Rizal family. It was built with the help of 25 centavo-donations of children from various schools at that time. And so is this any indication from the NHI that they are not bound to perform strict preservation and conservation procedures on this fifty-year old heritage structure and that they are free to paint it with whatever colors they may fancy?

Furthermore, they are also claiming that the NHI crew, when they scraped into the thick layer of paint of the house, discovered traces of green pigment within. Ergo it must have been painted green – the popular color at the time according to them. But did not they just say that they scraped into a painted replica and not into the original ancestral house? And since when did green become a popular color of ancestral houses in the Philippines? House paint was only made commercially available in tin cans in the United States of America in the 1880s; and I presume that it was not readily available here in our country for it must have been very expensive to import those tin cans of house paint then. This must be the reason why we hardly see a painted bahay na bato, or much less a bahay kubo for that matter, anywhere in this archipelago. Try scouring the country from north to south; and all that one will see are ancestral houses made of weathered wood, crusty red-orange bricks, pock-marked adobe ashlars, calcified corals, algae-covered red-orange clay roof tiles, and rusted galvanized iron sheets. Some of those ancient houses might have been white-washed with kalburo dissolved in water with the belief that kalburo would sanitize those houses from germs brought about by cholera or whatever disease. But apparently there was no streak of paint to speak of.

And now I am left wondering what if this precedent gets picked up by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), the government agency tasked with the issuance and approval of building permits? Would the DPWH, through the city or municipal building officials, now require all the applicants to do a research on the origins of their surnames and submit henceforth for approval the corresponding colors of paint that they intend to brush or spray on their respective houses? I presume NHI would again be tasked to dig into the Catalogo Alfabeto de Apellidos issued by Governor General Narciso Claveria y Zaldua in 1849 to figure out the matching house paint colors vis-à-vis the long list of Filipino surnames printed on its delicately yellowed pages. Now I wonder how they would creatively colorize esoteric and quirky Filipino surnames such as Malaque, Pecpec, Estrellado, Bay-ag, Bagonggahasa, Dimacali, Dimaculangan, Macatangay, Camcam, Madlangbayan, Tatlonghari, Bayot, Mabajo, Polotan, Amargozo, Pichay… And the list goes on and on.

Why cannot they just simply admit that they made a big boo-boo instead of issuing those rather funny statements? I suggest that they should go back to the drawing board posthaste.

Please click the link below:
http://globalnation.inquirer.net/viewpoints/viewpoints/view/20090629-213009/Turning-Rizals-bahay-na-bato-green

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