Neglected central fact

Tomorrow, Filipinos com-memorate the execution and death of the country’s national hero, Jose Protacio Rizal. Yet I doubt whether his death, or more accurately, the last hours leading to his death are understood by the people for whose cause he gave his life. Although there have been many biographies written about him, some of them increasingly controversial, a central fact of his heroism remains neglected. I refer to the question of his alleged retraction before his execution. This column contends that we have not done enough to clarify the issue to the detriment of our identity as a nation. Jose Rizal did not retract his condemnation of the Spanish friars. Some scholarship has been done, but on the whole, it remains terra incognia for most Filipinos.

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This is a pity. Understanding the controversy on Rizal’s retraction may hold the key to what afflicts the Filipino psyche. The Spanish authorities at the time used religion to control the natives. There was no subtlety about this colonial strategy. Moments before his execution, Rizal’s Jesuit teacher was asked to conduct the last-minute negotiations with the condemned man to ensure a "retraction". As a former teacher, the Jesuit was calculated to know which buttons to push.

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The attempt at damage control to hold back a burgeoning revolution at the expense of Rizal’s integrity is unfortunate. A lot has been said and written about the Katipunan and the wars of independence but the real battle for the independence of this country was waged in that darkened little room in Fort Santiago between Jose Rizal, our national hero, and his Spanish Jesuit mentor.

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It is my opinion that if we focused our attention on the intellectual struggle that took place then, we may come to understand what really ails us as a people. We have not shaken off the vestiges of colonialism and it has less to do with superior political and military might than it has to do with how the friars instilled the fear of "God" and the fires of hell into our silly heads, disabling us from ever thinking for ourselves or venturing into bold initiatives that could have made us a great nation.

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I am afraid that in the battle of minds on December 30, 1898, we were routed. We are a stultified, bigoted, backward society because of the continuing hold of those who would use religion perversely – including resort to retraction hours before executing a condemned man. That grip on the Filipino mind through the Catholic religion is strong up to this day. On matters such as divorce and birth control, that even more Catholic countries have long discarded, like Italy and Ireland, the Philippines remains staunchly conservative.

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As a result of this lack of understanding of the role of that religious grip from colonial days we have been held back from advancing in the modern world. I am not aware that there has ever been a serious study backed by national government resources that actually confronted his alleged retraction and the circumstances of Rizal’s death. I believe that such a study, if undertaken fearlessly, then popularized to bring its lessons to mainstream thinking, will help Filipinos understand why we have not done better as a nation.

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At the heart of the controversy of Rizal’s alleged retraction before his execution is whether a man who devoted his life to enlightening and liberating his people from religious imperialism would, at the threat of death, repudiate that life. If that had been the case, then Jose Rizal was no hero, but a coward who did not have the courage of his convictions and therefore undeserving of the honor we bestow on him every December 30.

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The background of events has become murky with time but logic and reason tell us a different story. If it were true that Rizal retracted before his execution in Bagumbayan, it seems strange that the Spanish authorities should have proceeded with the execution. Given the propaganda value of such a retraction and a colonial government desperate to win public opinion, it would have been more likely that they would have spared him. As an intelligent man and looked up to by Filipino revolutionaries, Rizal could have been used as a prized model of an apologetic troublemaker in those troubled times. But the Spanish colonial government, acting reportedly from pressure from the friars, had it both ways. It had a retraction and an execution.

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This is the anomaly we have to correct. Rizal was a religious man, but not the kind the Spanish friars’ wanted him to be. He was a child of the European enlightenment which opened up possibilities for the nations that it touched. More than anything, Rizal wanted to demonstrate to Filipinos that it was possible to be religious and modern, and break with the status quo if need be, when a man seeks the truth. We must recapture those moments to get at the most important lessons of Rizal’s legacy to Filipinos.

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My e-mail: [email protected] or [email protected].