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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.
In the upland portion of his property, Rizal
diverted streams, made dams, and laid out a network of
irrigation canals so he could farm.
The dwindling twilight generation still talks
vividly of personal interactions with the hero. Almost
every elder Dapitanos has a story of a personal contact
with Rizal. One person said that her mother was
Josephine Bracken’s best friend. Another remembered
that Rizal was an attending physician at the birth of
his father.
So much oral history that tells of his influence
in many Dapitanon lives has gone unrecorded. As a result
the present generation has practically lost is
connection to Rizal, the national celebrity who put
Dapitan on the map.
Stronger position
The Dapitan government is claiming a stronger
position for the city in the national map. With World
Bank assistance, city hall is charting the city’s
future course of development using Dapitan’s
distinctive heritage resources as bases. When its
Heritage Conservation Master Plan is completed, it will
probably be the only Philippine city with such a plan.
That sets Dapitan up as the pacesetter and as a role
model in conservation for other cities to follow.
A project team of local and Cebuano architects,
urban planners, and historians led by Maria Lourdes
Martinez Ozonawa walked each street of the city,
photographing and measuring each piece of heritage
architecture, interviewing residents to determine the
personal history of neighborhoods and individual houses.
To start the community planning process, members
of each barangay mapped all our the cultural resources
in their areas – heritage houses, monuments, open
spaces and beaches, churches and chapels, public
buildings, schools, libraries, going as far as to
include forests and tress, traditions like the
“komedya” and folk medicine, and old recipes.
As each barangay presented its cultural resources
to the audience, the expressions of the faces of members
lit up with a newly discovered pride of its place. The
people’s cultural map provides a picture of the
existing cultural resources, showing that there is more
to Dapitan than what is residents thought.
It was the usual case that the community could
not see how special their city and culture have always
been. After having done a cultural mapping exercise, now
Dapitanons can say with certitude that a cultural
renaissance for the city is easily achievable. Dapitan
has an excellent chance of achieving its goal of
becoming “Shrine City.” That will put it back on the
map for sure.
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