The past in our present

HONG KONG. Every December 30 we commemorate the execution of our national hero, Jose Rizal at Bagumbayan, now known as Rizal Park. But I doubt whether the significance of his death and execution is understood. I venture to say this lack of understanding was intended as part of our repression as a nation at the time. The trouble is that this malicious act of colonialism has never been corrected. It has stayed on with us wreaking havoc with our lives, maiming our abilities so that we would be unable to rise up to our potential as a great nation.

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Unless we understand why Jose Rizal was executed we will not move forward as a nation. It was not in the interest of the Spaniards as colonialists to make us understand. Neither was it in the Americans’ interest who came after them. It is my opinion that our lack of interest or difficulty in coming to grips with the truth about his execution is part of the colonial legacy. This legacy was accomplished brilliantly: we would be misled about Rizal’s heroism not by insulting him but by praising him too much. The undue emphasis on his individual qualities clouded the context in which that heroism was played out. That context is where our search for truth must begin.

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Archival resources are available to help us in this search. Some Filipinos have focused on Rizal’s alleged retraction as the key to understanding why Rizal was executed. They have been ignored as Masonic apostates. But instead of debating on dates or the time of the retraction (again to mislead), we should stick to the fact that the Spanish authorities took advantage of the helplessness of a prisoner condemned to death to elicit a retraction. The entire exercise has no merit in a civilized context. It exposes the moral bankruptcy that motivated the official act to secure a retraction by hook or by crook. The narrative on the events on December 29-30 should be considered within the foregoing context. This context necessarily implies the illegitimacy and immorality of both the political and church authorities.

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As an independent country attempting to reconstruct its identity we can choose the battlefield in which the issue of Rizal’s alleged retraction ought to be debated. Debates in the past were focused on dates, the authenticity of signatures and the discrepancy of text. These have not been helpful in finding out the truth. The whole point of securing a retraction was to break the spirit of Jose Rizal. And having been unable to secure that retraction, he was executed. What was that spirit all about? It was the spirit of enlightenment that Jose Rizal imbibed while a student in Spain. What did the Spanish friars represent? The ancient regime, the monarchy in Spain, the decaying Roman Catholic religion. Happily there are already a number of Filipinos who are on track in understanding that context: Jose Rizal lived in Europe at a time when religious traditions and beliefs were being questioned. He imbibed the intellectual challenge unleashed by the European Renaissance as did his other compatriots who became collectively known as Indios Bravos. These Filipinos abroad in the 19th century got hooked up to the intellectual ferment through their association with the Spanish Masonry.

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Therefore our search for heroic identity must begin in Europe, the origins of the Englightenment. Indeed, to be enlightened in Europe at the time was to be threatened with execution. The story of Galileo is instructive. His alleged retraction is parallel to the story of Jose Rizal. The study of how European intellectuals were made to retract intellectual discoveries would help Filipinos understand and be more able to judge whether or not Rizal did retract. Galileo Gallilei of Florence would confirm the Copernican system at a trial in Rome. He was found guilty of heresy. He was called before the Inquisition in 1633 just a century after the arrival of the Spaniards in the Philippines in 1521. Like Rizal under the threat of torture it was alleged that Galileo also retracted his belief in a revolving earth. But it is said that as he was leaving the tribunal, he muttered within hearing distance of witnesses E pur si muove (And yet, it does move.) In the book A World Lit Only by Fire William Manchester says Galileo’s retraction was considered inadequate and consequently he died blind and in disgrace. It would be more than two centuries later, around the early 19th century before Thomas Henry Huxley would be able to praise Galileo and condemn the Church as "the one great spiritual organization which is able to resist, and must, as a matter of life and death; resist the progress of science and modern civilization."

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That, too was the case of the Church in the Philippines and its insistence on the recantation of Rizal until today. What we need are Filipino Thomas Huxleys who will express the wider truth on Rizal’s execution. The task of the Filipino historian is to re-examine the accounts of retraction, the differences of opinion and the background of Catholicism in Europe from which it drew inspiration. The Church’s resistance to intellectuals was a kind of defense mechanism. At the same time, this is balanced by the truth that had there been no Supreme Church at that time, with too little science and no modern civilization in the Dark Ages the continent would have been in chaos. It was the very acceptance of papal supremacy by all Christendom that had rescued it.

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Instead of laying wreaths at a stone statue in Rizal Park, we should spend the day reflecting on the importance of understanding why Rizal was executed. By the time Filipinos arrived in Europe it was no longer possible for the Church’s critics to be silenced by "intimidating naive peasants or by putting the torch to defiant apostates. That age was coming to an end. There were too many apostates and heretics and they were too resourceful, too intelligent, well organized, and had their own powerful connections. The only way out for Spanish reactionaries was to practice their bigotry elsewhere and that is how Rizal was executed. That was possible in a colonial system but why has it persisted even when we have gained our political freedoms?"

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Marguerite Fisher, an outstanding American political scientist, wrote: "Jose Rizal is a great Filipino patriot. But I should like to look at him from a broader point of view. It is only from this view that his greatness is placed in the proper perspective. An outsider, perhaps better than a Filipino, can appreciate Rizal’s relationship to the great ideas of modern civilization. I want to stress that fact that he (Rizal) was the first person in all of Asia to advocate and introduce ideas which can be called modern democracy and western liberalism. There are other Asians who are far more famous than Rizal who expounded these same ideas or at least part of them. But they all came after Rizal. Sun Yat Sen in China led the revolution against the Manchu Empire in 1911 and became the first president and founder of the Republic of China. But most of his writings was done after 1900. Gandhi in South Africa and India did his writings in the late 1890s and 1900s. In Nehru’s case, it was around 1919 and after when he began to formulate his ideas. Thus there were no other Asians of any prominence in Japan, Indonesia, Muslim Asia, India, China, Malaya etc. who expounded the ideas of liberal democracy before Rizal. Hence he should be raised to the status far more important than that of a Filipino patriot."

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