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National heroes, within the context of nationalism, function as an integral component that both supports and is supported by narratives of nation. Nationalism, however, is a closed circuit that demands the paradoxical assertion that despite any acknowledgement of influential outside forces, such as the thrust of global politics or the decay of imperial or colonial control, the nation is nevertheless deemed an autonomous entity with a distinct culture and history. Thus, postcolonial national heroes are simultaneously constructed symbols of conflicting and congruent directions in a nation's story-or rather, its narrative of nation. I examine two national heroes, one from the Philippines and the other from Cuba: José Rizal and José Martí. But instead of focusing on the published works of these famous authors, I will provide a metacritique of their biographies written by others.
While not tied to the identity of the same nation, these two figures underwent similar processes in the project of nationalism. My evaluation of selected biographies of Rizal and Martí examines how the designation of "national hero" can be constructed, reformed, destroyed, and rebuilt in the genre of biography and one pseudo-biography dime novel. I examine the biographical texts Vida y escritos de Dr. José Rizal [Life and Writings of Dr. José Rizal] by W. E. Retana, Los errores de Retana [Retana's Errors] and The Story of José Rizal: The Greatest Man of the Brown Race by Austin Craig, and The First Filipino: A Biography of José Rizal by Leon Ma. Guerrero to highlight the constructedness of Rizal as a national hero of the Philippines. For José Martí, I will examine the historical novel Martí: Novela historica por un patriota [Martí: Historical Novel by a Patriot] by an unknown author, and Jorge Mañach's Martí: Apostle of Freedom to highlight the development of Martí as a national hero of Cuba.1
I examine biographies of these national figures as part of the conflicting and converging national projects of the colonizing and colonized nations- Spain and the US and the Philippines and Cuba, respectively. The constructedness of these two figures, who metonymically represent nation, reflects the simultaneity of control being wrested away from an extended period of Spanish colonial control to US control, with nascent national formation in the Philippines and Cuba. Rizal and...