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 APITAN
in Zamboanga del Norte is a tropical paradise whose
images belong to glossy travel
posters. Palms sway in the balmy breeze of the seaside
city, setting a leisurely pace for the city’s
laid-back lifestyle.
The mountain range around Dapitan embraces the
bay where the town is situated. Only a 20-minute drive
from Dipolog, the government and economic capital of the
province, Dapitan is a peaceful enclave that has been
spared the haphazard and chaotic development that
characterizes Philippine cities. There are no airports
or dirty harbors, nor are three malls, commercial
strips, fast food restaurants, or garish architecture.
Since all of the visual pollution and urban chaos is
relegated to its neighbor, Dipolog, Dapitan has
preserved its genteel, old-world ambiance.
Its primary asset is the unmistakable national
name recall of Dapitan. Each Filipino learns in school
that national hero Jose Rizal spent four years in exile
there. Rizal gives Dapitan its identity, establishing it
as a unique place where Philippine history unfolded.
That is what makes it different from all other
Philippine cities. The old-world ambiance of Dapitan
reinforces its historic setting.
The other Philippine city associated with Rizal
is his birthplace, Calamba in Laguna. Although a replica
of his family house and a museum in his honor exist
there, he is forgotten memory in his home town. In
Dapitan his memory lives on. He left so much physical
evidence of his stay in the town. Tracing the surviving
evidence of his stay in Dapitan provides an
understanding of the kind of a person he was.
Rizal traces
 Although
a political excile, he was not locked away in a
stockade. Dapitanos welcomed Rizal, took him into their
community and made him a part of their lives.
He mingled with the people, provided medical
treatment and helped in the education of their children.
He left a mark on the Dapitan plaza. The trees he
planted are now fully matured trees. People still come
to see the grass-covered relief map of Mindanao he laid
out in front of the Saint James Church. He even designed
an irrigation and water distribution system that is the
basis for the present distribution system.
In the beachfront farm where he lived, is the
Rizal Shrine maintained by the National Historical
Institute. It is at the end of the city’s Sunset
Boulevard by the bay at the edge of Dapitan.
At the shrine, carefully crafted replicas of his nipa
residence and the octagonal clinic structure where he
gave free treatment to local patients stand in the
coconut-shade garden. The rock formation where he took
the afternoon air and watched spectacular Dapitan
sunsets with Josephing Bracken still exists. Everything
about the Rizal Shrine tells of his four-year idyllic
respite in Dapitan.
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