Today is the sesquicentennial birth anniversary of Dr. Jose Rizal, our national hero.Dr. Augusto V. de Viana’s book, "The I Stories", is a compilation of eyewitness accounts of people who actually participated in important historical events, including little known accounts on Rizal. Those interviews were originally published in The Manila Times and the Philippines Free Press in the 1920s up to the 1950s.
One of those stories was about Rizal’s efforts to protect his books “Noli Me Tangere” and “El Filibusterismo” through the accounts of a relative of the hero’s family, Dr. Jose Francisco, and a former cabin boy, Perfecto Rufino Riego.
Perfecto Rufino Riego was a native of Sta. Cruz, Marinduque. Details of Riego's first meeting with the national hero based on the former’s account was shared by de Viana during the Marinduque historical conference held in the town of Mogpog in 2008.
According to de Viana, it was in the house of Francisco's father, Don Higino, where Rizal and other leaders of the independence movement held their secret meetings and kept their political propaganda, including the original manuscript of the Noli.
It was then Riego who took the task of smuggling copies of the Noli and Fili into the Philippines from Hong Kong, where copies of the books were shipped on the boat “Don Juan” from Germany where they were published. Riego also had a hand in the distribution of the books in Manila's old towns using a caleza.
Riego was a native of Sta. Cruz, MarinduqueIt was also the young Riego who helped another Filipino hero, Graciano Lopez Jaena, escape from the Spanish authorities during an aborted visit to the Philippines by disguising himself as an "apprentice" to Riego in taking him to Hong Kong on his way back to Spain.
The author, Dr. Augusto De Viana, was former chief of the research, publication and heraldry department of the National Historical Institute.
