How Rizal Became the National Hero of the Philippines

If you ask a Filipino who the national hero is, the reflex answer is José Rizal. Yet here’s a twist many still find surprising: no Philippine law has ever officially proclaimed any individual as “National Hero.”

Rizal’s primacy emerged through popular veneration, revolutionary-era commemoration, and a century of state rituals, schooling, and civic memory that elevated him above all others. Understanding how this happened requires tracing a layered story — beginning with grief and defiance in 1896 and crystallizing across the revolutionary, American colonial, Commonwealth, and post-war republics.

Shock, mourning, and the revolutionary embrace (1896–1898)

Rizal’s execution at Bagumbayan on December 30, 1896 shocked a country already in revolt. Even before the Americans arrived, leading revolutionaries were already treating him as the movement’s moral north star. The Katipunan named him its honorary president, and “Rizal” functioned as one of the society’s passwords—evidence of the esteem in which he was held, despite his reformist, anti-insurrection stance. That symbolic embrace helped turn his martyrdom into a unifying banner.

Two years later, the revolutionary government put ritual behind the sentiment. On December 20, 1898, President Emilio Aguinaldo decreed that December 30 be observed annually as a day of national mourning for Rizal and other victims of Spanish tyranny—complete with flags at half-mast and closed offices. The first nationwide observances followed that same month under Filipino authority (and, in U.S.-occupied Manila, under the eyes of the new colonial overlords).

In Daet, Camarines Norte, citizens even unveiled the first dedicated Rizal monument on December 30, 1898. These ceremonies show that the “Rizal cult” was Filipino-led from the outset.

Colonial institutionalization and early state honors (1901–1913)

When the United States consolidated control, its administrators reinforced the rising public veneration of Rizal—partly because his reformist image fit their governance narrative better than that of armed revolutionaries. Still, the earliest formal honors were concrete:

• Act No. 137 (June 11, 1901) created Rizal Province from parts of Manila and Morong — “the first official step” the new regime took to honor him by name.
• Act No. 243 (Sept. 28, 1901) authorized raising a public subscription and using Luneta land to erect a Rizal monument—a civic project run by a committee that included Paciano Rizal. The monument was later unveiled on December 30, 1913 (Rizal’s 17th death anniversary), after his remains were ceremonially transferred to the monument’s base in 1912.
• Act No. 345 (Feb. 1, 1902) designated national public holidays—including December 30 (Rizal Day)—ensuring his death anniversary became a recurring, state-sanctioned rite.

These measures did not “legislate” him as National Hero, but they embedded Rizal at the heart of public commemorations, spaces, and calendars—cementing habit and memory.

The “American-sponsored hero” debate—what the record shows

For decades, scholars have debated whether Americans “made” Rizal our premier hero. Renato Constantino’s influential 1969 essay “Veneration Without Understanding” argued that U.S. authorities promoted Rizal precisely because he represented education and civic reform rather than armed struggle, thus serving colonial objectives. That critique remains widely read.

Other historians, most prominently Ambeth Ocampo, counter that while U.S. officials indeed amplified Rizal’s image, Filipinos had already claimed him: the Katipunan’s honors, Aguinaldo’s 1898 decree, and the 1898 Daet monument all predate American institutionalization. In this telling, the Americans built on an existing popular cult rather than inventing it wholesale. The historical record supporting those pre-American commemorations is solid.

It is also true that U.S. political theater helped elevate Rizal in American eyes and, by extension, in official Philippine practice. During U.S. congressional debates on the Philippine Organic Act of 1902, Representative Henry Cooper dramatically recited an English translation of Mi Último Adiós, wielding Rizal’s martyrdom as a moral argument for the bill. The episode underlined how Rizal became a transpacific symbol of Filipino dignity—even within the colonizer’s legislature.

Rituals, monuments, and schooling: how hero-making works

Rizal’s ascent to “foremost hero” status wasn’t a single declaration; it was the cumulative effect of recurring public rituals (Rizal Day), national spaces (Rizal Park and the 1913 Luneta monument), and, crucially, education. By the mid-20th century, the state transformed admiration into curriculum. In 1956, Congress passed the Rizal Law (Republic Act No. 1425), requiring schools and colleges to teach his life and works—particularly Noli Me Tángere and El Filibusterismo—and to stock unexpurgated editions in libraries. Later directives reiterated the mandate, keeping Rizal central in civic education.

The same period saw long-horizon commemorations, like the Rizal birth centennial (1961), organized under a state commission created specifically for the purpose, further amplifying his symbolic presence in public life.

“National hero” without a proclamation

Here’s the key constitutional-cultural fact: the Philippines has never legally declared any specific person a “National Hero.” In the 1990s, President Ramos created a National Heroes Committee, which developed criteria and recommended nine figures (including Rizal, Bonifacio, Aguinaldo, Mabini, Del Pilar, Sultan Kudarat, Juan Luna, Melchora Aquino, and Gabriela Silang). No President acted on the list, consciously avoiding the politics of canonization. Even so, the state’s holiday policy and public rituals accord Rizal (and Bonifacio) a special, implied status.

In other words, Rizal became “the national hero” not by proclamation, but by practice — a century of commemoration, instruction, and civic usage that has made his name the intuitive answer.

Why Rizal rose above the rest

Several attributes explain why Rizal, among many heroes, became the country’s emblematic figure:

1. A martyr whose words outlived him. His novels, essays, and poetry—culminating in Mi Último Adiós—gave the revolution its moral vocabulary, even for those who chose different tactics than he did. The writings gave later generations a “textbook” for imagining the nation.
2. A hero acceptable across regimes. Revolutionaries honored him in 1898; the American colonial state could tolerate, even celebrate, him; the post-war Republic put him in the syllabus. That continuity made Rizal the easiest figure for disparate authorities and publics to rally around.
3. Ritual repetition. Annual Rizal Day ceremonies; the pilgrimage geography of Rizal Park; and the ubiquity of Rizal monuments—from Daet (1898) to Luneta (1913) and across the diaspora—kept his memory central and visible.
4. Pedagogy as nation-building. The Rizal Law ensured that every citizen met Rizal in the classroom, not just on statues and stamps. That curricular presence arguably mattered more than any formal title.

The verdict of history (and of habit)

So, who made Rizal the national hero? The short answer is: Filipinos did—first in grief, then in remembrance, and finally through ritual and schooling—with American colonial governance reinforcing (and at times reframing) an already emerging veneration. The longer answer is this article’s arc: Aguinaldo’s 1898 decree and grassroots monuments launched the tradition; the Philippine Commission’s acts gave it durable scaffolding; the 1913 Luneta unveiling provided the shrine; the Rizal Law cemented his civic pedagogy; and the absence of a legal proclamation left his status to the people’s and the state’s lived practices, not to a single statute.

In that sense, Rizal is both home-grown and institutionally sustained—the rare figure whose memory survived regime change because it could be owned by many publics at once: reformists and revolutionaries, colonized and colonizer, republic and diaspora. Heroism, to borrow a point often made by historians, was never legislated; it was lived and learned, year after year, on December 30 and in every classroom that opens Noli and Fili.