Rizal Park History | DR. JOSE RIZAL PARK

FILIPINO COMMUNITY OF SEATTLE:

Articles below credited to: Andrew Hedden

The Seattle Civil Rights & Labor Industry Project

University of Washington

Seattle’s history has long been intertwined with that of the Philippines. Beginning with the Spanish American War of 1898 and continuing through the brutal counter-insurgency that followed US colonial possession of the islands, the business of shipping troops and supplies to the Philippines contributed to Seattle’s early growth. This fact is reflected in various Seattle city parks dating from that era: Volunteer Park in Capitol Hill, named for the war’s volunteer soldiers; Woodland Park, which hosts a statue honoring fallen soldiers from the Spanish-American War and the “Philippine War;” and the original names of downtown’s City Hall Park and Magnolia’s Discover Park, “Fortson Square” and “Fort Lawton” respectively, both named for army men who died during the U.S. campaign to subdue the Philippines.

United States rule over the Philippines provided an opening for thousands of Filipino migrants to cross the Pacific in the early twentieth century. While U.S. law denied them citizenship on the basis of race, they nevertheless could travel to the United States without passports under the ambiguous status of “nationals” until 1934. Most came to the United States to work, hoping to make money and return home. In contrast to other first generation Asian Americans of that era, many also came to pursue higher education. As students they took low wage jobs to put themselves through school, but after graduation often discovered they were still segregated into the same menial positions. Among these immigrants were Vic Bacho and Trinidad Rojo, two men who would come to play central roles in the campaign to rename the bridges and establish Dr. Jose P. Rizal Park.

Eutiquio de La Victoria “Vic” Bacho was born to a middle-class family in Talisay, Cebu on November 20, 1903. After attending junior college in the Philippines, Bacho came to the United States in 1927 intending to continue in school. Instead, Bacho found racial discrimination, forcing him to work seasonal jobs throughout California. Spurred by the injustices he had experienced, Bacho turned to public engagement, becoming a central figure in Stockton, CA’s Filipino community. After serving in the military during World War II, he moved to Seattle to join his brother Vince. Employed at Boeing, Vic Bacho slowly worked his way through a degree at the University of Washington, earning a BA in Political Science at the age of 54. Throughout, he was active in a number of Filipino fraternal and community organizations, and remained highly political, campaigning for local and national Democratic candidates as a leader in the Filipino-American Political Action Group of Washington (FAPAGOW). Bacho would later put his political skills to use in building support for the Rizal Bridge and Park.

Trinidad Rojo hailed from the Ilocos region of the Philippines – not the Visayan Islands, like Bacho. Otherwise, their backgrounds were very similar. Born May 25, 1902, Rojo came to the United States in 1926 at the age of twenty-four to continue his education. Working his way through the University of Washington, Rojo labored in the few occupations open to Filipinos at the time, first in domestic service, then as a seasonal worker in fields and canneries. He graduated from the University of Washington in 1930 with a bachelor’s degree in English, Comparative Literature and Drama, with a minor in sociology.

Later pursuing graduate studies at Stanford and Columbia, Rojo described his life as being “like a yo-yo between the campus and the labor unions." In 1939, he was elected to the first of four terms as president of Local 7, a union of Filipino cannery workers that was a central institution in the Seattle Filipino community. Relations within Local 7 were often fractious. Rojo held a bitter hatred for Carlos Bulosan and the union president who hired Bulosan to write for Local 7, Chris Mensalves, who Rojo blamed for mismanaging union funds. Nevertheless, Rojo considered himself a moderate – working with conservatives and communists alike – and among his contemporaries, he was known for being a more or less neutral figure in the union, if having a big personality.

Rojo’s big personality made him eccentric; he described himself all at once as a sociologist, labor economist, dramatist, poet, philosopher and a businessman in real estate and finance. Rojo was ambitious and creative. His voluminous papers, left to the UW Libraries, are full of big ideas, from fashioning “floating universities” out of decommissioned aircraft carriers, to arranging for donations of Philippine animals to Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo.18 Later, he would petition to rename Washington State’s volcanic Mount St. Helens for Jose Rizal but as outlandish as some of his ideas could seem, Rojo’s ambition would play a big part in making Rizal Park and Bridge a reality.

naming Rizal Bridge.

As the Mount St. Helens petition exemplified, many of Rojo’s big ideas centered on ways to honor Jose Rizal. Born in 1861 in Calamba, Laguna, Phillipines, Rizal had traveled to Spain to study in the home country of his colonizer. Worldly and learned, Rizal spoke over ten languages and was, among many other things, a poet, historian, painter, sculptor, and medical doctor. A fervent advocate for Filipino rights under Spanish rule, he authored two incendiary anti-colonial novels, Noli Mi Tangereand El Filibusterismo. Blamed for stirring unrest against the colonial government, the books led to Rizal’s execution by the Spanish in 1896, a few short years before the Spanish-American War.20 Rizal’s martyrdom transformed his life and legacy into symbols, invoked to serve a variety of political purposes. Filipino revolutionaries appealed to his memory, but so too did American colonial officials, who promoted Rizal as a safe anti-Spanish figure, an alternative to more militant Filipino revolutionaries.

As students who came of age in the Philippines during the American

colonial period, Rojo and Bacho held great admiration for Rizal. In

many ways, Rizal was central to their identities. Not unlike Rizal,

Bacho and Rojo traveled to the homeland of the colonial power

seeking education. As a man of scholarly talents, Rizal embodied

the qualities they aspired towards as students. Emigrants of Rojo

and Bacho’s generation made Rizal a part of nearly all their

activities as Filipinos – from the names of their fraternal organizations

(such as Cabelleros De Dimas Alang, derived from Rizal’s pen name)

to their community celebrations (Rizal Day, held each year on

December 30, the anniversary of his execution). In his memoir,

Bacho explained the importance of Rizal Day to Filipinos in America.

“The 30th of December was a time to remember the homeland, a

time to feel patriotic and nostalgic. In observance of the national

hero’s day, the civic minded among the community made plans every year.”

For Bacho, Jose Rizal was the embodiment of Filipino civic engagement, and civic engagement was a way for Filipinos to better their selves and their standing in America. Explaining later why he had been driven to campaign for the Rizal Bridge and Park, Bacho drew upon the bitter memory of being slapped and spat upon by an inebriated white woman one New Years Eve in San Francisco. Restraining himself from responding to the racist affront, which, he was certain, could bring mob violence down upon him, Bacho stewed. “What can a Filipino do to improve his image so he can be recognized, respected, and treated as an equal?” the incident left him asking. “How can I or anyone else prove that a Filipino is just as intelligent as any white man? I had no answer to these questions but somehow something flashed in my mind and it was the image of Jose P. Rizal.” Over time, the flashes of Rizal in Bacho’s mind gained shape. “In my mind was a vision, a dream – if you will – that someday, somewhere, there would be a Rizal Park with the statue of the man in it.”

Trinidad Rojo shared Bacho’s dream. Rojo’s own aspirations to dedicate a memorial to Rizal dated back to at least 1960, when a Seattle chapter of “The Friends of Rizal” was inaugurated to promote relations between the city and the Philippines. The effort that eventually led to the Rizal Bridge in Park, however, began in earnest on May 30, 1973. The University of Washington Filipino Alumni Association, of which Bacho was president, had organized a program honoring Filipino American high school graduates. Trinidad Rojo was master of ceremonies and Seattle Mayor Wes Uhlman attended as a guest speaker. As the event was wrapping up, Rojo casually mentioned the idea of naming a street after Rizal to Mayor Uhlman. Uhlman was receptive, and Rojo and Bacho followed up with letters in the days afterwards, leading the Mayor to proclaim the week of June 19, 1973 “Dr. Jose Rizal Week.”

In 1973, Vic Bacho would turn seventy. Trinidad Rojo was seventy-one. They were now elders, and the Seattle Filipino community had grown past the days of itinerant bachelorhood that had first greeted Bacho and Rojo’s generation in America. Many had settled down with families, and combined with a new wave of mostly middle-class Filipinos that began arriving after US immigration reforms in 1965, the Filipino population in Washington State had risen from 2,222 in 1940 to 11,462 in 1970.

As one generation gave way to another, identification with Rizal was no longer as central to Filipino identity as it had once been. In the Philippines, where the radical left was growing in response to President Ferdinand Marcos’ imposition of martial law, the ambiguity of Rizal’s support for the anti-colonial revolutionaries of his time made his image increasingly unpopular. Divisions in the Philippines echoed in Seattle’s community, where contentious views about Marcos split along lines of family history, class and political orientation.30 Rojo, in particular, was a supporter of Marcos and engaged in arguments with young anti-Marcos activists. As a result, many of Seattle’s younger Filipino American activists, focused on their own campaigns, did not play central roles in establishing Rizal Bridge and Park. It would largely be an accomplishment of earlier immigrants like Bacho and Rojo who had achieved success in business and education, as well as other middle-class Filipinos who had arrived after 1965.

Following Mayor Uhlman’s proclamation of Rizal Week, Bacho, Rojo, and their community allies formed a “Street Naming Committee” to identify a street to petition the city to re-name in Rizal’s honor. They identified possibilities in and around the city’s International District, including King Street (known as Seattle’s “Little Manila” in the early years of Filipino migration) and Maynard Street, as well as Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Twelfth Avenues. Forwarding their suggestions to the Mayor, Bacho flexed his political muscles, alluding to the Mayor’s recent actions in support of Black civil rights and reminding Ulhman of his upcoming re-election campaign:

We know that while you have done quite well for the Negros in their struggle for social justice you have done very little if at all, for the employment of qualified Filipinos. We believe that if the selection and dedication of a Dr. Jose Rizal Street can be accomplished within a short period of time, the effort to win them back may not be too difficult. As the Cabelleros De Dimas Alang’s chairman and therefore its Pacific Northwest representative, the naming of Dr. Jose P. Rizal Street will unite the members to campaign actively for you.

The Mayor referred the matter to the city’s Superintendent of Public Works, Alfred Petty, who informed Bacho that renaming streets of longstanding was against city policy. Instead, Petty suggested renaming King County’s new domed stadium (later known as the Kingdome) “Jose Rizal Stadium” – an odd suggestion, because Asian American activists had been fervently protesting the stadium’s development, which threatened the vitality of the International District. Bacho recalled that he “could not help but chuckle a bit upon hearing the suggestion.”

On November 4, 1973, Mayor Uhlman wrote to Trinidad Rojo with an amenable solution: renaming 12th Avenue South Bridge, as well as undeveloped parkland nearby, for Jose Rizal. The Street Naming Committee accepted, and the city’s Board of Public Works made the rededication of the bridge official shortly after in December. Several months later, in March 1974, Bacho received word that the park was also official. Finally, in a ceremony on June 19, 1974, the one hundred thirteenth anniversary of Rizal’s birth, the bridge and park were formally rededicated. Dr. Jose P. Rizal Bridge and Park were now a reality.

MAKING DR JOSE RIZAL PARK:

A few months following the dedication of the park and bridge, a letter arrived for Vic Bacho from Seattle’s Superintendent of Parks and Recreation, David Towne. Outlining the costs of the park’s development, the letter ended offering well wishes: “Good luck in pursuing funding for this most unusual view park.” The letter took Bacho by surprise. He had assumed the city would fund the development of the park. While the city had prepared a twenty-page master plan, the responsibility fell to the larger Filipino community to clear the overgrown parkland and seek the resources to put the plan into place.

Despite some early disagreement within the community over how the park would come together, a united Rizal Bridge & Park Development Committee emerged in 1977 to continue to petition the city for funding, meeting with city council members and writing letters of ever-stronger tone.38 By the end of 1978, they had enough funds to hire an architectural firm to begin building the park. Aspirations for the park included formal gardens, an outdoor theater, a community center, a museum, a library and recreation space, play fields, and a children’s play area.39 But as construction planning commenced, it quickly became clear that most of the site was too unstable to develop on. Even most of the original 1974 master plan would have to be scrapped.

Perched on the northwest corner of Seattle’s Beacon Hill, the park site was susceptible to landslides, a problem that dated back to the mid-1920s when city engineers had extensively re-graded the hillside. The 1920s re-grade was itself a response to damaging mudslides caused by yet another, earlier, poorly executed land development. The original 1912 Dearborn re-grade had ploughed through the hill, making the 12th Avenue Bridge necessary and razing a low-income neighborhood in the process. City engineers had hoped their work would boost property values. Instead, it depreciated them. Now, in 1974, the area surrounding Dearborn Street was a tangle of empty hillsides and loud free-way interchanges. It was “really a very bad place” for a park, Vic Bacho admitted.

None of this made the Development Committee any less determined to see the park through to completion. With the funds wrestled from the city, the architectural firm Elaine Day LaTourelle and Associates was enlisted to develop an amphitheater, play area, shelter house, parking, and a bathroom. Additionally, Filipino American artist Val Laigo was commissioned to produce a colorful mural, “East is West,” an abstract expressionist tribute to the converging cultures of the United State and the Philippines. Finally, on June 7, 1981, a rainy Sunday afternoon, Dr. Jose P. Rizal Park would be formally dedicated After seven years of concerted striving, a sorry, forgotten location had been turned into what would become one of Seattle’s most popular viewpoints.

1007 12th Ave S Seattle, WA 98144