The Land Surveyor
by Oliver Carlos
In teaching the Rizal course, I want my students to discover unheard-of facts about Jose Rizal so that they would have a better appreciation of our national hero. One dimension of Pepe that they would find out is that aside from being a doctor and a novelist, he was also a land surveyor. He got that degree from Ateneo. After completing what is equivalent to our high school, Rizal took up a land surveying course. Ateneo most probably had a vocational school or department with such offering. Rizal was able to apply that profession when he purchased a large parcel of land in Dapitan during his 4-year exile there.
Recently, I started browsing some old photo albums in my parent’s house in Los Banos. One of the oldest photos I found was a 1934 picture of my maternal great grandfather together with his officemates. His name was Catalino Miranda, he was a land surveyor in Tarlac province during the American Colonial Period. He is the 3rd person from the left, on the 3rd row. He is marked with a blue line in the picture above. The sign on the photo says Land District №8, Bureau of Lands.
A land surveyor’s job is crucial in the issuing of land titles. He measures the dimensions of the parcel of land and declares its coordinates. Now I discovered something in common between an ancestor of mine and our national hero, Jose Rizal.
Mr. Miranda had that job for a very long time. My Dad said that Catalino was already in that profession when my grandmother Ceriaca (Dad’s mother, Catalino’s daughter) was born in 1913. Catalino died in 1945 in his family’s World War 2 hideout in the hinterlands of Sitio Ayson, Gerona, Tarlac. He died of a heart attack.
There was also a mention of land surveyors in the Bible. In the Book of Joshua, we find the Israelites successfully conquering the Promised Land. Near the end of the book, in chapter 18, only a few of the tribes of Israel have settled in their respective parcels of land. A lot more tribes, seven to be exact, haven’t taken possession of what was rightfully theirs. They were just camped out in one place, still living in tents, when they should have been building permanent homes in cities.
So, their leader Joshua commissioned a handful of land surveyors to go out into the territory and come back to him with a report. Then he would divide and distribute the land to the Israelites. We read in Joshua 18:8–10 (NIV):
“As the men started on their way to map out the land, Joshua instructed them, “Go and make a survey of the land and write a description of it. Then return to me…..So the men left and went through the land. They wrote its description on a scroll, town by town, in seven parts, and returned to Joshua ……and there he distributed the land to the Israelites according to their tribal divisions.”
Sometimes in our walk, we are like the Israelites. The Promised Land symbolizes the blessed and prosperous life God has for us. We actually have it in the bag, we are just not taking possession of it. Thus, we can’t enjoy it.
So beginning today, let us “survey the land” and “take possession” of it. Let us read the Bible, go over it like a land surveyor, and discover the so many promises God has for us, and then claim them all and enjoy life to the fullest!
