0.2 Opus dei book's darkened rizal & Why - chapter 2  (Page 11/16)

To this day I haven’t met any of your students and graduates (many of whom are family related) with any knowledge of the real historical Rizal. Particularly as described in this paradigm-replacing critique of Dr. De Pedro’s Opus Dei book. Nor have I met anyone curious or caring enough to read his main works from an objective nonsectarian and non-ideological viewpoint. Do you ever ask yourselves, or your students, questions like: Which group hounded and demonized him the most?; Which framed and ultimately killed him, and why?; Why do some critics claim that the alleged retraction of beliefs and other errors assassinates Rizal’s principled sterling character?; Why do I say it is also a demolition job on his “Constancy Swan Song”? As a true death poem. And the fact of its finishing on December 30, 1896 and its defiantly secret delivery, twice. I bet you never knew this before about our own subject who happens to be our country’s greatest world-heroic son (not “Pacman” as most impliedly seem to think). How sad that his true last hours, so full of drama like the last hours of Socrates, even of Jesus as traditionally understood from the Gospels for that matter, has yet to be understood properly from all the available evidence—and staged or filmed. And here as in Catholicism’s role in the Holocaust, you also do have an unfulfilled duty of repair, to borrow an apt phrase.

This has got me thinking: So deeply unknown, so falsely venerated, so indolently unread is Rizal that it is as if he had never lived at all! Not even nearly fifty years of American imperial endorsement of him as its hero too succeeded in arousing avid general interest in reading his writings. A real Philippine tragedy in other words, not just a great shame but costly for affecting our Third World peoples’ abilities in closing the achievement gap with those of the bar-raising First World. I figured: he must have turned into chief nationalistic hero confusedly through a major series of accidental events. The more I thought about this the more defensible the idea became, though a detailed explanation remains for others to pursue. Remember the deceitful use of his name by the 1890s rebel junta for recruitment and waging war? Remember the theocracy’s revelatory suppression of his powerful anti-rebellion letter and other innocence-declaring evidence? His conviction and execution as an accused nationalist zealot helped too. Even the announcement of his conversion back to Catholicsm endeared him to venerating masses who wanted a hero like themselves. Then came conquering Americans at the end of the century and their totally unexpected discovery of Spain’s rare Indio man of science and patriotic nonviolent humanism. He must have reminded them of their own Enlightenment-inspired founding fathers. They co-sponsored his quick rise to number one hero of the new conquered nation. They were encouraged by Rizal’s writings to prepare it for eventual independence. Add to this rich brew of confusions and accidental events his anti-Spanish fame -by the retraction-respecting ideological nationalists. All these things conspired to set him up indeed for “Veneration Without Understanding”. The highly nationalistic historian Constantino got it right at least in loudly stating that Rizal firmly fought the pro-independence rebellion of 1896 (though the former, like most others, couldn’t fathom Rizal’s deep nonviolent reasons for it). You may subscribe to his key points that Rizal doesn’t deserve veneration as father of the 1896 revolution and the nation-state that over time developed from it. But for truth’s sake, don’t misrepresent his true nonviolent teachings, which harped on self-transformations first, by embarrassingly inventing excuses that he didn’t really mean to oppose but differed only with the rebel junta in respect to tactics, timing, preparations, etc. Behind the scenes, he had been planning violent revolution with brother Paciano, as enriched by a stint in Cuba. Really you don’t have to like the real historical Rizal and his prime teachings, but as objective students of history let us not be dishonest in representing him as anti-Spanish nationalist zealot, or statist protectionist for that matter, like ourselves.