“RECTO’S RIZAL BILL”

Three years ago, the Claro M. Recto Foundation launched The Recto
Valedictory, a compilation of the last ten speeches Recto was set to deliver in
Spain had he not died unexpectedly in Rome on October 2, 1960. I bought the
book primarily for Nick Joaquin’s superb translation of these speeches published
in parallel text with the original Spanish, thinking it would come in handy one day
when he decided to brush up on my Spanish.

Today I checked my historical calendar and found out that if Recto were
alive today, he would be 100 years old. A recto Commission has been formed,
and I hear that three of the projected eight volumes of Recto’s complete writings
will be launched this week.

Few students today know the compulsory Rizal course they detest so
much is due in large part to Recto. In the University of the Philippines, the Rizal
course is coded as PI 100, or Philippine Institutions 100, and I often hear it said
that PI 100 actually means “Putang Ina 100”. I don’t blame them, because the
main reason I agreed to teach this course way back 1986 at De La Salle
University was I didn’t like the way it was taught to me and I had promised myself
that my students will have an “alternative” way of dealing with Rizal and out past.

You cannot help but notice the resistance of students to the Rizal course
on the first day of class-they make you feel how very useless they feel it is in
their lives. Then add to this the prevailing lie that Rizal was made national hero
by the Americans over Bonifacio. This is why I open my classes with a lecture on
how Recto fought tooth-and-nail to get the Rizal Bill passed into law in 1956.
Since Recto is very much a nationalist icon, students stop grumbling and begin to
listen.

I usually try to recreate the excitement that accompanied the debates and
hearings on the Rizal Bill: the verbal jousts, the hecklers in the gallery (pro-Rizal
of course), the rising blood pressures and the fistfight in Congress between two
hotheaded representatives. When students see Recto in the history of the Rizal
course, they shut up and feel sorry they even thought of playing with the acronym
of PI 100.

We do not remember how some members of the Catholic hierarchy found

170 passages in Noli and 50 in Fili offensive to the Catholic faith. They reaffirmed
that Catholics could read selected passages from Rizal’s work, but to compel
Catholics to read Rizal’s novels in its unexpurgated version was to force heresy
on them and violate their freedom of conscience.

Students who read Rizal’s novel today cannot understand what all the fuss
was about. It is funny to think that in 1956 the very same obscurantism that
banned Rizal’s book in 1887 was still operative.

Catholic school’s threatened to close shop if the Rizal Bill was passed.
Recto calmly told them to go ahead so the State could then nationalize them.
Some Church bigwigs even threatened to “punish” erring legislators in future
elections, but Recto was undaunted. Here was a man willing to risk losing votes
because of his principles, this why I admire Recto so much.

There was a proposal to use “expurgated” novels as textbooks, with the

“unexpurgated” copies to be kept under lock and key in the school libraries and
to be used only at the discretion and/or approval of higher school officials. Recto
threw this out. He did not want an adulterated Rizal Bill:

Nget_08
 The people who eliminate the books of Rizal from the
schools……..would blot out from our minds the memory of our national
hero……This is not a fight against Recto but a fight against Rizal…..now
that Rizal is dead and they can no longer attempt at his life, they are
attempting to blot out his memory.

I think our problem is our short memories and our resistance to history
courses. I wonder if my generation will be as emotional about Rizal and his works
in case there is a move to abolish the Rizal course again. Maybe not.

The bill was passed with a clause that would give exemptions to those
who feel the reading Rizal’s novel would damage his or her faith. One can go to
the Department of Education with an affidavit attesting to one’s brittle faith and
get an exemption – not from the Rizal course that you still to take – but from the
reading the novels of Rizal. I usually tell my students that to my knowledge, no
one has yet availed of this exemption, and if they are too lazy to read, they can
always use this loophole in the Rizal Bill. Thus far, none of my students has even
tried.

To give an idea about the type of people Recto was up against, here are
excerpts from the archbishop’s letter banning Rafael Palma’s Biografia de Rizal.
The good archbishop said Palma’s biography was:

…….depreciatory of institutions of Catholic church and pernicious

to the spiritual health of the faithful especially the youth of both sexes for
whom the book has been approved and introduced in public schools as
home reading…….we hereby prohibit under pain of sin and canonical
sanctions the reading, keeping or retention of the same whether in the
original or in translation In the Archdiocese of Manila and Cebu.

Need I say more? (02/08/90)

Nget_08