Noli me tangere
Before anything else, let me thank the 201 people who texted me last weekend: 195 were in agreement with Rizal and me; six were not. That proportion is indeed heartening.
In celebration of Jose Rizal’s 150th birthday, his descendants’ schedules were crammed with events. At the party held on his birthday night at Fort Santiago, my niece Sanya Faustmann and I decided to go see the movie Noli Me Tangere the next day. Off we went to the Mall of Asia to attend the cocktails — from 10 a.m. to 11:30 — hosted by the Goethe House and Shoemart. Goethe House and the German Embassy found the movie reel, had it restored, and now Shoemart was showing it in all its theaters nationwide. I hope that many intelligent Filipinos went to see it. It was an interesting and beautiful movie.
Gerry de Leon of LVN directed this version of Noli Me Tangere. It starred Eddie del Mar as Crisostomo Ibarra and Editha Vidal as Maria Clara. Editha was an actress not many people had heard of before or since, but I knew her. She was my classmate in Maryknoll grade school. She was tall, dark and pretty and when they affixed false eyelashes on her and all the other women in the film, they all looked gorgeous. In the ’60s false eyelashes were very much in fashion, as they are now beginning to become fashionable again.
Handsome Leopoldo Salcedo played the role of Elias. I remember a story that my former boss, Totoy Avellana, loved to tell. Gerry de Leon was briefing Pol Salcedo on the live crocodile he was going to fight in the movie. “The crocodile knows how to bite,” Gerry said, “so you better watch out for his teeth. He knows how to swat his tail to hurt you. He knows how to …”
“Wait,” Pol Salcedo interrupted, “does the crocodile know I am Pol Salcedo?” I thought that a funny story.
I had seen this movie in the ’60s. All I remember is that Maria Clara must have worn a voluminous bra because she kept pulling out big envelopes from her bosom. But I was only 16 then. Now I am 66 slipping into 67. I understand the whole movie. I understand why Sisa went crazy. She had a useless husband, hardly any money and two little boys to raise. The sacristan was abusing her children; in fact, had accidentally killed the little one, Crispin. I, too, would have gone crazy.
And the Filipinas of those days pretended to be dumb, though they were not entirely stupid. Maria Clara seemed charming and a bit insipid, but she found the guts to trade something in a bag — maybe money or her jewelry — with Padre Salvi for the letters he claimed to find that described the circumstances of her birth. This told her that her mother took all sorts of drugs to abort her, that her father helped by giving money for the drugs, but this child held on tenaciously. So she was born. She found out her father was Padre Damaso, the friar who adored her but who did not want her to marry Crisostomo Ibarra.
This brings me straight to the RH Bill issue. The novel Noli Me Tangere was written in the 1890s, roughly 120 years ago. Then the Catholic Church was already demeaning women, refusing to educate them, giving women they had impregnated money to buy abortion drugs. The movie was made 51 years ago. Nothing has changed in 120 years! This is pathetic! Why can we not educate our women to take care of their bodies? You think Rizal wrote this book just to get rid of the friars? No, he wrote this book to save his country, starting but not ending with the women.
I found out very recently that there are only two countries in the world that do not have divorce laws — the Vatican and the Philippines. Do you know how big a country the Vatican is? It is 44 hectares with a citizenship of approximately 800 people. It is smaller than our old farm in Laguna. It is a mere suburb of Rome, which got itself declared as a country sometime in 1929 in favor of the cross, which symbolizes Catholicism. It is so small. Why are we following its example? Can our government ask itself that question, please?
Who made us into a country? Did we talk to our neighbors and ask, “Hey, do you think we should become a country like the United States of America did?” No! The Spanish sailed around a big bunch of islands they had discovered, landed in Cebu or Butuan, and declared us one country, Las Islas Felipinas — they named us after King Felipe of Spain. We were so far from Spain we were ruled by friars, no separation of church and state. The friars called us indios and withheld education from us. This continued for 300 years. Then the Americans took over and kept us for another 50 years. Those 350 years damaged our culture because we did not stop to analyze the damage they did to us. Instead we Filipinos stepped into our colonizers’ shoes and ruled as they had ruled.
We have been half-asleep all these years. My friends, can we wake up now? One of the texts I received said, “In spite of poverty, Rizal’s life inspired me to accomplish things that are not so ordinary. If only our countrymen could fully grasp the meaning of Rizal’s sacrifices, our country would be a better place to live in.” And I agree.
Noli me tangere. You know what that means? In archaic English it means, “Touch me not.” In today’s English it’s “Don’t touch me.” Somehow I feel Rizal was saying that to the Catholic Church and to all of us Filipinos. Of course, we failed to understand it.
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