Dela Cruz, Mary Margarette C.

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Tuesday/Friday Readings in Philippine History 9:00-10:30

Rizal’s Retraction Controversy

Forgery is the crime of falsely and fraudulently making or altering a document according
to the Merriam Webster Dictionary. Trying to pass off something as authentic when it is not
could be held in the court of law which is why the Rizal’s Retraction Letter has been a huge
controversy to the public since it was made knowledge of. The document of the retraction of Jose
Rizal is hotly being debated by academics and Catholics as to its authenticity ever since it’s
discovery in 1935 by Fr. Manuel Garcia. Apparently, hours before Jose Rizal’s execution, he
had signed the retraction letter which stated: “I declare myself a Catholic and in this religion in
which I was born and educated I wish to live and die. I retract with all my heart whatever in my
words, writings, publications and conduct has been contrary to my character as son of the
Catholic Church.”
Many academics dispute or doubts the authenticity of the letter because of the surfacing
of different versions of letters and due to the original letter never being displayed for public
viewing, only it’s reproduction. However, according to Fr. Pio Pi, a Spanish Jesuit, the letter was
published word by word both in Spain and it was reproduced in Manila. Both reproductions have
an evident difference and one of them was dated in December 29, 1890. Two other ‘original
document’ also surfaced, which both bore different dates: “December 29, 189C”and “December
29, 1896. It was very clear that someone had tampered with the letter which caused scholars to
doubt its’ authenticity.
Those who strongly believed that Jose Rizal did not retract his writings believed that
Roman Roque, a man that was infamous for forging the signature of Urbano Lacuna (which was
then used to arrest Emilio Aguinaldo), forged Rizal’s signature. According to them, as well, the
friars approached Roman Roque and Lazaro Segovia, the mastermind behind both the forging of
Lacuna and Rizal’s signature, to forge Rizal’s signature. There were those who believed that the
friars were behind the forging of Rizal’s retraction to deflect his heroism.
It is important to know whether Rizal really did retract before his final moment or not,
not to invalidate his heroism (because he still is, whether he retracted or not) but to know
whether our nation has been fooled by people who had reasons to deceive us.