Dr. Jose P. Rizal Retraction Issue Revisited
(Published in Pinoy News Magazine, 2011)
(Editor: This lecture was given June 18, 2011 at the Newberry Library in Chicago by Ramon G. Lopez, M.D., a great-grand nephew of Dr. Jose Rizal through the Paciano and Narcisa branches of the Rizal family tree. His father is Edmundo Rizal Lopez, grandson of General Paciano and Severina Decena, and of Narcisa Rizal and Antonino Lopez. Two separate branches of the Rizal tree bore his father’s parents: Emiliana Rizal from General Paciano, and Antonio Lopez from Narcisa Rizal. His father’s parents were first cousins. He is a fourth generation Rizal kin.)
In this sesquicentennial birthday commemoration of our national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal, I have decided to revisit with you my personal viewpoint regarding the controversial issue of the alleged retraction of his political and religious beliefs as he neared his death and martyrdom. This is a topic that always seems to come up whenever I am honored with an invitation to speak.
It has been 150 years since the birth of our national hero. It is almost 115 years since he was executed by firing squad. Still, the alleged recantation of his life’s work and beliefs as espoused by his accusers and detractors festers like an open wound, challenging and holding hostage the purity of his legacy. The question for us of course is, “Why the continued interest?” Is it perhaps because history gives us a “clouded” answer regarding this matter? Is it perhaps because when we read the works of the so-called “authoritative” sources on our martyred hero, a third of them passionately declare that he did not recant his moral, political, and ecclesiastical beliefs? That the next third vigorously say he did, and the remaining third have not an opinion, or are still searching for facts to bolster a belief?
“Lolo Jose”
There are those who would be “fence-sitters”, for they themselves are unsure on the true facts of history. And then there are also those who would parse their words and had said that if Dr. Jose Rizal did abjure, “it was not a surrender of intellect, only a renewal of the heart.” As the venerable late Philippine Senator Camilo Osias had declared:
“This mooted question should be calmly analyzed and weighed in the light of the character of Dr. Jose Rizal. Either Rizal did or did not retract. The burden of proof is upon those who insist that he did. And they must come forward with a documentary or other evidence that is irrefutable and convincing. Until that evidence that is incontrovertible and overwhelming is produced, free men and thinking men cannot accept Rizal’s retraction as a fact…. Now, if he retracted and yet was executed on that fatal December 30th, the crime of his murderers becomes doubly heinous!”
For now, even my 98-year old esteemed and endeared Tita Soni Lopez-Bantug who wrote the book, Lolo Jose – An Intimate Portrait of Rizal and Indio Bravo had admitted to the family, “At the time I wrote the books, I decided to leave the issue of the ‘Retraction’ to the judgment of the readers, but afterwards regretted doing so.” She said, “Personally, I never at all believed that he had made a retraction.”
Likewise, is it not ironic that during the 377 years in which the Philippines was under Spanish colonization, the pervasive regime was then that of an intimately conjugal administration by the religious and secular? And not too long ago in 1956 when a fist fight broke out in the halls of the Philippine Congress as they debated the passage of Senator Claro M. Recto’s “Rizal Bill”, with the protagonists being the State (i.e. the Philippine government) versus essentially, the Philippine Catholic Church, which then had declared that 170 passages in the Noli Me Tangere and 50 passages in the El Filibusterismo were offensive to the Catholic faith?
