Del Rosario, Ma. Mikaela A.

OLAU122E001
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science
ICCT Colleges Inc. (Antipolo Satellite Campus)
February 11, 2024

Teacher: Mr. Armando Duco Jr.

“EXPLORING
PHILIPPINE HISTORY
MYSTERIES”
OLSS01
___

Activity No. 4

CHAPTER 4 - CONTROVERSIES IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY

Introduction: Dr. Jose P. Rizal’s Retraction–The Truth Behind It?

The controversies that has written a big part of the Philippine History is
something that gives it a different flavor as if adding a tanginess like what my
grandmother looks for in her special delicacy to make its flavor unique and truly
remarkable. It creates this new dimension of wonders that not all are able to appreciate
nor even enjoy thus letting it slip instead of savoring such a delight. It uncovers and
questions possible “truths” behind the curtains of flamboyant lies enticing the curiosity

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 Among all the historical contoversy that are famous here in the Philippines, I
found the retraction paper of Dr. Jose P. Rizal, our National Hero ,which was introduced
and were archived on May 13, 1935 to debunk all accusations and “probable evidence”
against the Catholic Church, which are his novels namely Noli Me Tangere and El
Filibusterismo. Above all these, a speculation ran like a colony of ants swarming this
“truth”. The supporters of Rizal and even his relatives questioned the credibility of the
document. They stated that it contradicts Rizal’s character and philosophy.

Below are articles presenting both sides and criticizing the said controversy:

Analysis Rizal's Retraction

(an analytic article wriiten by Rizal supporters from the Jose Rizal University)

At least four texts of Rizal’s retraction have surfaced. The fourth text appeared in
El Imparcial on the day after Rizal’s execution; it is the short formula of the retraction.

The first text was published in La Voz Española and Diaro de Manila on the very
day of Rizal’s execution, Dec. 30, 1896. The second text appeared in Barcelona, Spain,
on February 14, 1897, in the fortnightly magazine in La Juventud; it came from an
anonymous writer who revealed himself fourteen years later as Fr. Balaguer. The
"original" text was discovered in the archdiocesan archives on May 18, 1935, after it
disappeared for thirty-nine years from the afternoon of the day when Rizal was shot.

We know not that reproductions of the lost original had been made by a copyist
who could imitate Rizal’s handwriting. This fact is revealed by Fr. Balaguer himself who,
in his letter to his former superior Fr. Pio Pi in 1910, said that he had received "an exact
copy of the retraction written and signed by Rizal. The handwriting of this copy I don’t
know nor do I remember whose it is. . ." He proceeded: "I even suspect that it might
have been written by Rizal himself. I am sending it to you that you may . . . verify
whether it might be of Rizal himself . . . ." Fr. Pi was not able to verify it in his sworn
statement.

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 This "exact" copy had been received by Fr. Balaguer in the evening immediately
preceding Rizal’s execution, Rizal y su Obra, and was followed by Sr. W. Retana in his
biography of Rizal, Vida y Escritos del Jose Rizal with the addition of the names of the
witnesses taken from the texts of the retraction in the Manila newspapers. Fr. Pi’s copy
of Rizal’s retraction has the same text as that of Fr. Balaguer’s "exact" copy but follows
the paragraphing of the texts of Rizal’s retraction in the Manila newspapers.

Regarding the "original" text, no one claimed to have seen it, except the
publishers of La Voz Espanola. That newspaper reported: "Still more; we have seen and
read his (Rizal’s) own hand-written retraction which he sent to our dear and venerable
Archbishop…" On the other hand, Manila pharmacist F. Stahl wrote in a letter: "besides,
nobody has seen this written declaration, in spite of the fact that quite a number of
people would want to see it. "For example, not only Rizal’s family but also the
correspondents in Manila of the newspapers in Madrid, Don Manuel Alhama of El
Imparcial and Sr. Santiago Mataix of El Heraldo, were not able to see the hand-written
retraction.

Neither Fr. Pi nor His Grace the Archbishop ascertained whether Rizal himself
was the one who wrote and signed the retraction. (Ascertaining the document was
necessary because it was possible for one who could imitate Rizal’s handwriting
aforesaid holograph; and keeping a copy of the same for our archives, I myself delivered
it personally that the same morning to His Grace Archbishop… His Grace testified: At
once the undersigned entrusted this holograph to Rev. Thomas Gonzales Feijoo,
secretary of the Chancery." After that, the documents could not be seen by those who
wanted to examine it and was finally considered lost after efforts to look for it proved
futile.

On May 18, 1935, the lost "original" document of Rizal’s retraction was
discovered by the archdeocean archivist Fr. Manuel Garcia, C.M. The discovery, instead
of ending doubts about Rizal’s retraction, has in fact encouraged it because the newly
discovered text retraction differs significantly from the text found in the Jesuits’ and the
Archbishop’s copies. And, the fact that the texts of the retraction which appeared in the
Manila newspapers could be shown to be the exact copies of the "original" but only
imitations of it. This means that the friars who controlled the press in Manila (for
example, La Voz Española) had the "original" while the Jesuits had only the imitations.

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 We now proceed to show the significant differences between the "original" and
the Manila newspapers texts of the retraction on the one hand and the text s of the
copies of Fr. Balaguer and F5r. Pio Pi on the other hand.

First, instead of the words "mi cualidad" (with "u") which appear in the original
and the newspaper texts, the Jesuits’ copies have "mi calidad" (with "u").

Second, the Jesuits’ copies of the retraction omit the word "Catolica" after the
first "Iglesias" which are found in the original and the newspaper texts.

Third, the Jesuits’ copies of the retraction add before the third "Iglesias" the word
"misma" which is not found in the original and the newspaper texts of the retraction.

Fourth, with regards to paragraphing which immediately strikes the eye of the
critical reader, Fr. Balaguer’s text does not begin the second paragraph until the fifth
sentences while the original and the newspaper copies start the second paragraph
immediately with the second sentences.

Fifth, whereas the texts of the retraction in the original and in the manila
newspapers have only four commas, the text of Fr. Balaguer’s copy has eleven commas.

Sixth, the most important of all, Fr. Balaguer’s copy did not have the names of
the witnesses from the texts of the newspapers in Manila.

In his notarized testimony twenty years later, Fr. Balaguer finally named the
witnesses. He said "This . . .retraction was signed together with Dr. Rizal by Señor
Fresno, Chief of the Picket, and Señor Moure, Adjutant of the Plaza." However, the
proceeding quotation only proves itself to be an addition to the original. Moreover, in
his letter to Fr. Pi in 1910, Fr. Balaguer said that he had the "exact" copy of the
retraction, which was signed by Rizal, but her made no mention of the witnesses. In his
accounts too, no witnesses signed the retraction.

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 How did Fr. Balaguer obtain his copy of Rizal’s retraction? Fr. Balaguer never
alluded to having himself made a copy of the retraction although he claimed that the
Archbishop prepared a long formula of the retraction and Fr. Pi a short formula. In Fr.
Balaguer’s earliest account, it is not yet clear whether Fr. Balaguer was using the long
formula of nor no formula in dictating to Rizal what to write. According to Fr. Pi, in his
own account of Rizal’s conversion in 1909, Fr. Balaguer dictated from Fr. Pi’s short
formula previously approved by the Archbishop. In his letter to Fr. Pi in 1910, Fr.
Balaguer admitted that he dictated to Rizal the short formula prepared by Fr. Pi;
however; he contradicts himself when he revealed that the "exact" copy came from the
Archbishop. The only copy, which Fr. Balaguer wrote, is the one that appeared ion his
earliest account of Rizal’s retraction.

Where did Fr. Balaguer’s "exact" copy come from? We do not need long
arguments to answer this question, because Fr. Balaguer himself has unwittingly
answered this question. He said in his letter to Fr. Pi in 1910:

"…I preserved in my keeping and am sending to you the original texts of the two
formulas of retraction, which they (You) gave me; that from you and that of the
Archbishop, and the first with the changes which they (that is, you) made; and the other
the exact copy of the retraction written and signed by Rizal. The handwriting of this
copy I don’t know nor do I remember whose it is, and I even suspect that it might have
been written by Rizal himself."

In his own word quoted above, Fr. Balaguer said that he received two original
texts of the retraction. The first, which came from Fr. Pi, contained "the changes which
You (Fr. Pi) made"; the other, which is "that of the Archbishop" was "the exact copy of
the retraction written and signed by Rizal" (underscoring supplied). Fr. Balaguer said
that the "exact copy" was "written and signed by Rizal" but he did not say "written and
signed by Rizal and himself" (the absence of the reflexive pronoun "himself" could
mean that another person-the copyist-did not). He only "suspected" that "Rizal himself"
much as Fr. Balaguer did "not know nor ... remember" whose handwriting it was.

Thus, according to Fr. Balaguer, the "exact copy" came from the Archbishop! He
called it "exact" because, not having seen the original himself, he was made to believe

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that it was the one that faithfully reproduced the original in comparison to that of Fr. Pi
in which "changes" (that is, where deviated from the "exact" copy) had been made.
Actually, the difference between that of the Archbishop (the "exact" copy) and that of Fr.
Pi (with "changes") is that the latter was "shorter" be cause it omitted certain phrases
found in the former so that, as Fr. Pi had fervently hoped, Rizal would sign it.

According to Fr. Pi, Rizal rejected the long formula so that Fr. Balaguer had to
dictate from the short formula of Fr. Pi. Allegedly, Rizal wrote down what was dictated
to him but he insisted on adding the phrases "in which I was born and educated" and
"[Masonary]" as the enemy that is of the Church" – the first of which Rizal would have
regarded as unnecessary and the second as downright contrary to his spirit. However,
what actually would have happened, if we are to believe the fictitious account, was that
Rizal’s addition of the phrases was the retoration of the phrases found in the original
which had been omitted in Fr. Pi’s short formula.

The "exact" copy was shown to the military men guarding in Fort Santiago to
convince them that Rizal had retracted. Someone read it aloud in the hearing of Capt.
Dominguez, who claimed in his "Notes’ that Rizal read aloud his retraction. However,
his copy of the retraction proved him wrong because its text (with "u") and omits the
word "Catolica" as in Fr. Balaguer’s copy but which are not the case in the original. Capt.
Dominguez never claimed to have seen the retraction: he only "heard".

The truth is that, almost two years before his execution, Rizal had written a
retraction in Dapitan. Very early in 1895, Josephine Bracken came to Dapitan with her
adopted father who wanted to be cured of his blindness by Dr. Rizal; their guide was
Manuela Orlac, who was agent and a mistress of a friar. Rizal fell in love with Josephine
and wanted to marry her canonically but he was required to sign a profession of faith
and to write retraction, which had to be approved by the Bishop of Cebu. "Spanish law
had established civil marriage in the Philippines," Prof. Craig wrote, but the local
government had not provided any way for people to avail themselves of the right..."

In order to marry Josephine, Rizal wrote with the help of a priest a form of
retraction to be approved by the Bishop of Cebu. This incident was revealed by Fr.
Antonio Obach to his friend Prof. Austin Craig who wrote down in 1912 what the priest
had told him; "The document (the retraction), inclosed with the priest’s letter, was
ready for the mail when Rizal came hurrying I to reclaim it." Rizal realized (perhaps,

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rather late) that he had written and given to a priest what the friars had been trying by
all means to get from him.

Neither the Archbishop nor Fr. Pi saw the original document of retraction. What
they was saw a copy done by one who could imitate Rizal’s handwriting while the
original (almost eaten by termites) was kept by some friars. Both the Archbishop and Fr.
Pi acted innocently because they did not distinguish between the genuine and the
imitation of Rizal’s handwriting.

THE RIZAL RETRACTION AND OTHER CASES

(written by Peter Jaynul V. Uckung, National Historical Commission of the

Philippines (NHCP)

The flow of history is as inexorable as the tidal flow of an angry ocean. But
ever so often in our collective recollection, it is remembered that sometimes the skilful
use of forgery can redirect the flow of history itself.

In the Philippines today, forgery is usually resorted to redirect the flow of

money from the rightful beneficiary to the unworthy pockets of invisible people.

That money is usually the target of forgery is known and practiced all over the
world, but forgery in the hands of the wily, has power to effect a redirection of events
and undoing of history. It has the power to obscure or beliee an occurrence or create an
event that did not actually transpire. It also has the power to enslave and destroy.

In October 1600, the Muslim Ottoman Army and a Christian army, led by
Austrians, with Hungarian, French, Maltese and German troops were battling it out for
territory called Kanizsa. The Ottoman army was outgunned and outmanned, but the
Ottoman commander, Tiryaki Hasan Pasha was a clever man. He knew that the
Hungarians were not too happy to be allied with the Austrians. So he sent fake letters,
designed them to be captured by the Austrians. The letters contained Hungarian
alliance with Ottoman forces. The Austrian upon reading the fake letters signed by a
reliable source (obviously forged) decided to kill all Hungarian soldiers.

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 The Hungarians revolted and the Christian army disintegrated from within.
Thus, did the Ottomans won the battle, by issuing forged communication.

During World War II, the British, to protect the secrecy of the Allied plan to
invade Sicily in 1943, launched operation Mincemeat. This was a deception campaign to
mislead German Intelligence about the real target of the start of the Allied Invasion of
Europe.

A series of seemingly genuine secret documents, with forged signatures, were

attached to a British corpse dressed in military uniforms. It was left to float somewhere
in a beach in Spain, where plenty of German agents were sure to get hold of it.

The body with the fake documents was found eventually and its documents
seen by German agents. The documents identified Sardinia and Corsica as the targets of
the Allied invasion. The Germans believed it, and was caught with their pants down
when allied forces hit the beaches of the real target, which was Sicily.

This kind of deception was also used by the British against the Germans in
North Africa. They placed a map of British minefields, then attached them to a corpse.
The minefields were non-existent but the Germans saw the map and considered it true.
Thus, they rerouted their tanks to areas with soft sand where they bogged down.

In 1944, a Japanese sea plane crashed near Cebu. According to Japanese

military officials who were captured, and later released, they were accompanying Gen.
Koga, Commander in Chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet. Gen. Koga died in the
crash. A little later, Filipino fisherman recovered some Japanese documents. They
delivered the documents to US Intelligence. The documents revealed that Leyte was
lightly defended. As a result, the Americans shifted their invasion target to Leyte
instead of Cotabato Bay in Mindanao.

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 On October 17, 1944 the invasion of Leyte went underway. Leyte was lightly
defended as the Koga papers have indicated. But it was during the invasion of Leyte
when the Japanese navy launched their last offensive strike against the US fleet, with
the objective of obliterating it once and for all. They nearly succeeded. After this
near-tragic event, the Koga papers were considered by some military strategists as
spurious and could have been manufactured by the Japanese to mislead the American
navy into thinking that Leyte was a defenceless island. That Leyte was a trap. And the
Americans nearly fell into it.

In recent memory, there was an incident in which the forging of documents

served to negate the existence of an independent Philippines.

In 1901, the Americans managed to capture a Filipino messenger, Cecilio

Segismundo who carried with him documents from Aguinaldo. The American then
faked some documents complete with forged signature, telling Aguinaldo that some
Filipino officers were sending him guerrillas with American prisoners. With the help of
a Spanish traitor, Lazaro Segovia, the Americans assembled a company of pro-American
Filipino soldiers, the Macabebe scouts. These were the soldiers who penetrated the
camp of Aguinaldo, disguised as soldiers of the Philippine Republic. They managed to
capture Aguinaldo. With the president captured, his generals began to surrender, and
the Republic began to fall.

The document of the retraction of Jose Rizal, too, is being hotly debated as to
its authenticity.

It was supposed to have been signed by Jose Rizal moments before his death.
There were many witnesses, most of them Jesuits. The document only surfaced for
public viewing on May 13, 1935. It was found by Fr. Manuel A. Gracia at the Catholic
hierarchy’s archive in Manila. But the original document was never shown to the public,
only reproductions of it.

However, Fr. Pio Pi, a Spanish Jesuit, reported that as early as 1907, the
retraction of Rizal was copied verbatim and published in Spain, and reprinted in Manila.
Fr. Gracia, who found the original document, also copied it verbatim.

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 In both reproductions, there were conflicting versions of the text. Add to this
the date of the signing was very clear in the original Spanish document which Rizal
supposedly signed. The date was “December 29, 1890.”

Later, another supposedly original document surfaced, it bears the date

“December 29, 189C”. The number “0” was evidently altered to make it look like a letter
C. Then still later, another supposedly original version came up. It has the date
“December 29, 1896”. This time, the “0” became a “6”.

So which is which?

Those who strongly believed the faking of the Rizal retraction document,
reported that the forger of Rizal’s signature was Roman Roque, the man who also forged
the signature of Urbano Lacuna, which was used to capture Aguinaldo. The
mastermind, they say, in both Lacuna’s and Rizal’s signature forging was Lazaro
Segovia. They were approached by Spanish friars during the final day of the
Filipino-American war to forge Rizal’s signature.

This story was revealed by Antonio K. Abad, who heard the tale from Roman
Roque himself, them being neighbours.

To this day, the retraction issue is still raging like a wild fire in the forest of
the night.

Others would like to believe that the purported retraction of Rizal was
invented by the friars to deflect the heroism of Rizal which was centered on the friar
abuses.

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 Incidentally, Fr. Pio Pi, who copied verbatim Rizal’s retraction, also figured
prominently during the revolution. It was him, Andres Bonifacio reported, who had
intimated to Aguinaldo the cessation of agitation in exchange of pardon.

There are also not a few people who believe that the autobiography of
Josephine Bracken, written on February 22, 1897 is also forged and forged badly. The
document supposedly written by Josephine herself supported the fact that they were
married under the Catholic rites. But upon closer look, there is a glaring difference
between the penmanship of the document, and other letters written by Josephine to
Rizal.

Surely, we must put the question of retraction to rest, though Rizal is a hero,
whether he retracted or not, we must investigate if he really did a turn-around. If he did
not, and the documents were forgeries, then somebody has to pay for trying to deceive a
nation.

“FLIPPING THE COIN: WHICH SIDE ARE YOU?”

The abovementioned articles have clearly stated, delivered and criticized the said
controversy which questioned the declared document of Retraction of our National
Hero, Dr. jose P. Rizal.

If I were to choose on which side should it be, which is the truth, I strongly stand
that the aforementioned retraction is nothing but a fake. It is nothing but a clear proof
of “pathetic cleaning”with their insolent doings made by the aloof Spaniard colonizers
who enslaved us for over 300 years. To maintain control and to perceive authority. A
clear evidence to this is the difference of the usual Rizal’s handwriting which is
beautiful, controlled but intelligent. Another would be the clear contradiction of this
paper with Rizal’s way of thinking. He wrote his novels to enlighten the Filipinos back
then and to bring forth the truth. To liberate us from such forsaken prison of fear by
letting us realize that if we truly desire freedom, we must therefore let ourselves be free
from it.

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