1.

If you were Rizal, will you take the Spanish friars’ offer of retracting your statements against
them, knowing full well that they won’t fulfill their end of the bargain?

- Rizal’s time was very different from today. If you’ve read how powerful the pope was and
had kings in Europe executed, that was how powerful the friars or in tagalog “prayle” were.
Evry land was owned by the friars including the Rizal Residence. The governor general was
practically a puppet of the church. On top of this, atheism and agnosticism did not exist. Can
you imagine how frightened Rizal must have been to die without confession. On top of this,
being excommunicated in 1896 was as deadly. If excommunicated, Rizal will not only go to
hell but his family too -parents, sisters, cousins. If you can imagine what life awaited Rizal’s
brother, sisters, mother after the surname Rizal had been “excommunicated”. Nobody will
do business with them or go near them. They will be a disease or like an outcast.
If we were Rizal, can we honestly say that we are brave enough not to recant? In 2020, it
is easy to say “yes, Pinoy pride!”, “MABUHAY NG PINOY”. But in 1896, that was a different
game altogether. You would have been dead already literally if threatened
excommunication and dying without confession.

2. How will you disprove the claims of the proponents in the disputed Katipunan's Cry?

-The event that ushered in the Philippine Revolution against more than 300 years of
Spanish occupation is as significant as it is controversial. Sick of the oppression under foreign
rule and craving for freedom and independence, Filipino revolutionaries under the leadership of
Andres Bonifacio tore their “cedulas” (residence certificate) as a sign of their resistance.

When and where it happened has been the subject of much controversy. It has been
called the “Cry of Balintawak” and celebrated every 26th of August for the longest time. But the
National Historical Commission changed the date to August 23 and the location to Pugad Lawin
based mainly on the accounts of Dr. Pio Valenzuela.