Chapter 7

Faith-Influenced Demolition of World’s

Ultimo Adios Death Poem

One of the most thrilling moments of my long [U.S]congressional service… the first [1902 autonomy] enabling act for the Philippines…. President McKinley, governor Taft and the rest of us met obstacles on every side…. Who came to our rescue, sir?... Jose Rizal!

─Henry A. Cooper to V.A. Pacis in 1926

(Free Press, 12/27/1952)

De Veyra’s landmark demolition

“I heard it again on TV! I can’t count the number of times I’d heard or read something like it in the media since publishing in 1996 my first Rizal book exposing the retraction-inspired De Veyra myth of Trinidad in effect daringly smuggling out the “Adios” on December 29, 1896. In the late afternoon from her brother’s maximum-security death cell. Rumors were rife at the time that the Katipunan rebels would rescue him at the last minute. So prison guards and officials were on the lookout for any signs of smuggled notes passing in or out of the death cell in any way or shape. Yet Trinidad at great risk of getting caught and jailed as a suspected rebel managed to smuggle out contraband in the form of a defiant-tender poem hidden in the emptied cooking lamp. She should have really been so proud to publicly and privately claim, tell and retell that daring smuggling role of hers had it happened. She never did. It is myth.

“Still rampant indeed are such misrepresentations concerning this unique Third world hero. It just never stops these displays of aggressive ignorance and misinformation bearing on his still unknown core-identity and core teachings, his continuing veneration without understanding of why he deserves being PH top hero. It reminded me of the TV reruns of the most wildly hailed major movie about him years ago full of confusions under influence of the still reigning false paradigm. This resembled the former of last Sunday night, August 23, 2009 on National TV on the hero’s life. It centered, as nearly always, on the hero’s alleged highly nationalistic anti-Spanish and revolutionary politics. Still unknown and uncelebrated is his core-identity and teachings from its depths as a church-and-theocracy martyred humanist. As such and as a Masonic freethinker, he nonviolently campaigned and fought for self-dignifying revolutionary self-improvement. Above all else, you could say, from the moral and intellectual benightedness of Fourth and Third World existence and towards the long arduous task of First World civilization. His alleged anti-Spanish politics led colonial Spain, his most hated chief enemy, to kill him for political reasons. Yet. even the highly nationalistic Dr. Quibuyen’s cited 1999 major work, which bizarrely turned Rizal into a kind of ‘Bonifacian Katipunero’, stressed nevertheless the hero’s self-critical anti-statist philosophy of ethical nation-building. He warned against the likely the horrors of the newly emerged nation-states from the colonized Fourth and Third Worlds.”

I wrote those introductory words and thoughts in quotation marks last year in draft-form for chapter seven of this cnx.org book on Rizal vs. Catholicism. But as I updated and rewrote for final uploading online I find those quoted lines and thoughts applying with greater force and relevance. It has to do with my anti-retraction paradigm’s rejection I’ve told previously and elsewhere in the just-concluded International Rizal Conference. That confirmed for me what I had earlier been saying about the visible and invisible influences of the retraction-respecting paradigm, especially as practiced by the highly nationalistic who find over-cultivation of Rizal’s anti-Spanish politics a much safer topic. Then I and several friends attended the renowned Virgilio S. Almario’s July 2, 2011 lecture and launching of his new book touching on similar ideas. Some views aired there in the packed community-type meeting require timely comments here. Some of what was aired illustrate what I’ve been meaning to say. Was I surprised to hear that the highly influential Jaime C. De Veyra had been the former’s mentor long, long ago.

Philippine literature emeritus professor Almario would be shocked to hear from me here, I think, that his former teacher’s highly influential 1946 book, “El Ultimo Adios”, published in Manila by the Philippine Bureau of Printing as if to give it official standing, spearheaded the postwar demolition of the heroically composed masterpiece from being globally known otherwise as the world’s best-told death poem. Naturally deserving the date of December 30, 1896 for being a death poem. Consider, he lectured, that the magnificent poem contained 70 Alexandrine lines of 14 syllables each, divided into 14 rhymed stanzas. When Rizal worked on his other similar, if longer, masterpiece, with its key ideas and forms reflected in the “Adios”, and which was finished in Dapitan in October 1895, it took him many months to do it. He seemed to be agreeing with De Veyra that the “Adios” couldn’t have been done in the death cell. He seemed blissfully unaware as were all other teachers in the Rizal courses in attendance that his highly influential teacher’s book was faith-inspired to demolish “Adios” as a true death poem. Why and how?

His Destructive “Cuando Se Compuso?”

In fact Catholic De Veyra, under the influence of his belief in the retraction, regretted the demolition he reluctantly proposed to do, because it reduces the stature of Dr. Rizal and his alleged death poem: “Lo de haberse escrito en capilla.” That it was written in the death cell, he wrote. He did so with a seemingly innocent but wrong and confusing question: “Cuando Se Compuso El ‘Adios’?” His key chapter four bore that title too. When, indeed, was the originally undated poem composed to completion? That is to say written and finally finished? That would include, of course, making of the final and corrected clean copy sent off to the world, does it not? Please think about all this again owing to the confusions that surrounds the subject until now. This became evident in the public lecture and book launch just mentioned when probably a teacher asked the professor: “Sir, when was the “Adios written?” Well, that’s really the wrong question to ask! It only nurtures the confusions surrounding the subject. Maybe it confused the expert lecturer too. He quickly gave an answer similar to De Veyra’s because I heard him say it was too complex and difficult to be written in a day.

“I confess that this [question]…has required from me long hours of meditation and study…Was it done in the death cell….Was it really [there] composed and written?” That’s from the same key chapter four. The seductively clever question-begging presumption of “Cuando se compuso?” is that if clearly the very difficult time-consuming masterpiece could not have been composed or written in a day in the death cell from 7 A.M. on ‘the 29^th’ to 7 A.M. of ‘the 30^th’ when the hero was shot, then it was not composed or written in the death cell. It could not be regarded as a true death poem deserving an official date of December 30, 1896. Or, even deserving to be dated on the previous day in the late afternoon in time for Trinidad’s visit, as the highly nationalistic and Catholic retractionist Nick Joaquin argued fantastically in his biography of the hero. For, he stated openly outright, Rizal’s last will and testament, his true Swan Song was the December 29-30, 1896 Retraction itself.

If De Veyra is correct; if subsequent other retraction-respecting nationalists predisposed by ideology to see colonial Spain as the top PH hero’s most hated enemy which killed him is correct; this follows: the historic Rizal-venerating Cooper erred (or lied) in telling his indio-denigrating colleagues in the 1902 U.S. Congress that he read and recited for them the noble indio’s death poem (in translation). So they would grant right away to their just-conquered natives their deserved individual freedoms and local autonomy for nation building, which Rizal campaigned for in vain from Spain. Ironically by twist of fate not in vain through his death poem, from America which in 1899 replaced Spain in its Philippine archipelago.

So, no death poem the “Adios” is after all. That’s what effectively is enshrined in historic Fort Santiago’s special “Adios” room, imagine that! Filipinos themselves stupidly undermining themselves by implicitly accepting demolition of a precious cultural heritage, demolition too of the world’s best-told death poem. Yes to this self-lowering claim, but if and only if De Veyra’s demolishing question is the rightly formulated one to ask! Happily, it is not, even if variations of it keep getting asked to this day and still generating rampant errors and confusions, as was evident from the well-attended public lecture and questions asked cited here for illustrative purposes. Surely this insults the memory of Cooper’s martyred Masonic scientific humanist Rizal by the brightest among his Third World religiously superstitious people. That retraction-inspired question of De Veyra’s needs to be drastically reformulated into “Cuando Se Termino Del Todo El Ultimo Adios?” Specifically in English: “When was “Adios” completely finished for sending to the world in its final written form?

That means in this case: posted as it were into the emptied cooking lamp. If this supremely defining historic event happened past midnight of the 29^th into the wee hours of the ‘30^th’, as the dying perfectionist poet made his last improvements for the final clean copy, then it qualifies truly by any standards as a death poem deserving the official date of December 30, 1896. It deserves treatment as a National Poem and Heritage. Tragically, this has not been the case under the still reigning paradigm false paradigm that just recently showed its awesome invisible hand at the 2011 International Rizal Conference. De Veyra did not just respect the retraction as many scholars still do out of respect or sensitivity to Catholics, but stated as another proof for the poem’s not being a death poem:

Using Trinidad vs. Brother

De Veyra searched the archives for a big proof external to the poem for his retraction-inspired demolition of “Adios” as a true death poem. He found it in an obscure affidavit filed by Trinidad with the American administration in 1908, most probably through counsel. He told this story in his influential book’s third chapter, as if this finding came first to his attention than the succeeding chapter four’s retraction-based evidence. The affidavit was done at the request of Executive Secretary Carpenter for the primary purpose of authenticating the lost-and-found Adios, before paying its finder abroad for it. Yes, Trinidad recognized is handwriting and paper as the same one she had held in her hands as its custodian before it disappeared with the disappearance of Josephine Bracken. She described how the poem fell into her hands and care. On leaving the death cell in the afternoon of December 29, 1896 she (some officials as well) heard her brother say (as he did with others) he wanted to leave her with a keepsake too but had none to give except the alcohol cooking lamp, which was visibly on a table presumably. “Al entregarselo,” he quickly added in a lower voice in English, “There is something inside.” If she did take it out, and owing to the historicity of that specific action, why didn’t she say so precisely? Even proudly at greater length and level of detail in her affidavit? This does not say her brother handed out the lamp for risky immediate takeout by her as she left.

I interviewed biographer Austin Coates on this about late 1996, and he more or less replied emphatically: “If Trinidad tried taking the lamp out with her, she wouldn’t have been allowed. Anything going in and out was carefully examined. The prematurely emptied and dispatched cooking lamp would have drawn suspicions. Rizal risked being discovered if he tried and risked the likely jailing of Trinidad.” Without bothering to check with Trinidad herself about whether she did take out the lamp immediately from the maximum-security death cell and prison-fortress, De Veyra jumped conclusions that she did. How ironic in view of Trinidad before the Second World War playing a most active public role in exposing the retraction as fraud. In her declarations and descriptions of her last death-cell visit her brother left the lamp (and its poem inside) in her care as keepsake, or was giving it as a souvenir to keep. Catholic De Veyra, under spell of the retraction, quickly jumped to his misinterpretation to construct with help of other Catholic nationalistic scholars and writers the nationalist-retractionist myth of Trinidad wonderfully smuggling out the poem in the lamp by late afternoon or early evening of December 29, 1896. He and they conveniently omitted mention of other keepsakes, letters, and leftovers turned over to the family after the execution on December 30, 1896. We know De Veyra was surely faith-influenced because another proof he offered was Catholicism’s Rizal Retraction claims itself. Its entire start-to-finish absorbed most of the hero’s attention and time during most of the last day and entire last night:

At the first hour of December 29 … the Jesuits … attended to his spiritual needs….A bit later Fathers Rosell …Faura likewise visited … Then Fathers Vilaclara and Balaguer …. After the retraction [signing] his rest, prayers, the confessions three of which he made, two masses … the marriage …. the Jesuits …always at his side…[these left no time …]

Conveniently the retraction-respecting highly nationalistic storytellers referred to above make no mention of a most likely second delivery to the world of the “Adios”: in the corpse’s shoes that rotted away in the moist ground because the family waited neary two years to recover it. He told family members to look in the shoes, not just inside the lamp. This was the corrected draft sent off to the world in the shoes, for insurance, in case the first attempt failed. For, very clearly, the undated, untitled, unsigned but almost perfectly written original was hurriedly copied from a corrected draft. But when did Trinidad, with Maria’s help she said, actually examine the lamp for that something inside? To look for its signs including shaking it and hearing a thud in its emptied fuel chamber tried extraction with this or that tool? Again the affidavit does not specifically say evening of the 29^th. In her defense one could say she was recalling events of some twelve years before and those details were not the affidavit’s main concern and purpose but determination of the found document’s authenticity and why she was the competent expert to determine it. The Rizal-admiring first American biographer of he hero, Austin Craig, who interviewed the Rizals for his famous biography, is clear in regard to when the lamp was rigorously examined by the Rizal ladies in order to extract whatever was smuggled in it. Go read it in the Internet. The Dapitan boy (more on him later), former student of the hero who played go-between between him and the family while he was imprisoned, brought the lamp to the ladies in the house of Narcisa, on the night after the execution. In my interview with Austin Coates, which I reported on in previous published ignored works, Coates exuberantly in a loud voice endorsed that date. He added more confirming details about when exactly the keepsakes and leftover personal items, together in a bundled pile, were handed over to the Rizal family and their representatives as the hero had requested of the authorities and his Spanish military counsel presumably. This happened after the execution. With so fine a death worthy of the utmost respect no matter from what side you were on, you could hardly refuse to honor your brave enemy’s last wish to hand over his leftovers to his family. What tragic shame it is that the Adios enshrined in the historic Fort Santiago Museum is a very close version of De Veyra’s, except that Trinidad’s starring role was bizarrely replaced by Narcisa’s. That’s another long story of shameful irresponsibility deserving a separate treatment in the next chapter.

I might as well comment at this point, since I’ve been challenged on it in the Internet about a year ago by the retraction-respecting highly nationalistic scholar Edgar Millan. The major 1999 book of Dr. Quibuyen errs in its implied endorsement of Trinidad as smuggler of the poem on December 29, 1896. For, citing Katipunan general Alvarez’s memoirs written decades after the event in question, it tells that Josephine, Trinidad and Paciano trekked off very early the following day to meet up between 12 and 1P.M. lunch with Alvarez and Katipunan leader Bonifacio in Cavite. Alvarez is known to have erred at other times in recalling the exact correct dates of some important events in which he took part. The visitors brought with them the previous night’s Adios, which the latter soon freely translated into, in effect, into a revolutionary Katipunan poem. However, the known accepted facts point to both ladies grieving and caught up in related tasks in solidarity with the rest of the family in Manila on that whole day of the execution.

Paciano was already in Cavite at the time. More likely, in view of Trinidad’s 1908 affidavit implying that Josephine took the “Adios” when she disappeared, it was she, some days later, who took it to the rebels in Cavite, for faithful copying and translating into Tagalog. She went without Trinidad. She could have pre-arraned with Paciano to meet up with him there to introduce her to the two top leaders. She apparently volunteered as well to help out.

Quibuyen justified Bonifacio’s alleged translation, particularly of the second stanza. This was virtually a Bonifacian call to arms. However, as I and Margarita Ventenilla Hamada have separately argued many times elsewhere, that is one of those places open to misinterpretation for being not specific enough. On the contrary the stanza could even imply ironic criticism of insufficiently critical rebels, to whom nevertheless he generously bade good-bye and saluted for their courage and love of country.

At the previously mentioned July 2 recent lecture and book launch I asked at questions time as member of the large audience whether it was fair to turn the nonviolence-espousing humanist’s poem into Bonifacio’s war song. The learned professor took a tolerant stance because of those revolutionary times and Bonifacio’s revolutionary nationalistic aims. I and a lawyer-business companion got shocked at the reply. We both felt that translation approach misrepresents and dishonors Rizal’s poetic last will and testament. We felt shock as well when the professor in reply to a question about the retraction remarked the subject was old stale stuff from the past during the famous freethinker Dr. Pascual’s contentious times. He thought it cannot be fully or conclusively resolved. And, anyway, it didn’t really matter either way anymore. Quick, someone sympathetic to the alternative paradigm embedded here: tell the professor and his large audience of admirers to take a close look at my cnx.org book, of which this is its updated chapter seven. That online book rejected by mainstream Philippine publishers I’ve approached also concerned the invisible and visible influences of the faith-based belief in the retraction to this day. Wasn’t De Veyra so influenced in his demolition of “Adios”? So were many who toned down or mistranslated its defiant messages against his religious oppressor-executioners. “Prof.,” if I may call you such, if the Church’s retraction story does not matter, why do nearly all Filipinos to this day not know in its depths and full context? My lawyer-business friend asked at the time: doesn’t the full retraction mock what Rizal stood firmly and died for?

Defiant-tender contents

Why did the “Adios” require brilliant careful staging of the keepsakes and planning for its safe and assured smuggling to the world? Note that all the last-minute scheming and planning to outwit his alerted jailers for the poem’s final corrections and secret send off to the world, not once but twice, are hardly the telltale acts of a piously and completely retracting fellow. It needed smuggling to the world twice, with others in the shoes, to falsify “rumores” of recantation that he intuited the Church-and-its-theocracy may tell after his death. That descriptive poem of his bore witness to the end of his condemned Masonic scientific humanism. Filipinos until now are blissfully unaware of this. Nationalistic partisans, who like blaming old Spain and the U.S. for Philippine failed attempts a so-called NIChood, and with whom I’ve exchanged heatedly many times in the Internet may insult me for saying these things with the charge of being a self-hating colonial mentality. But I’ll also say that the totally surprising U.S. Congressman Henry Cooper showed before the world a much deeper appreciation of Rizal’s humanist core identity, as embedded in the latter’s supremely defining poem.

So let us ask how in 1902 Cooper could surely tell that the poem he used to take his House of Representatives by storm in favor of his co-sponsored Philippine rights-and-autonomy bill was in effect the world’s best-told death poem, implying too a final finishing date of December 30, 1896? Well, just by examination of its text from start to finish it talks of the immediacy and certainty of death and his legacy therefore. It’s very last line bids “Farewell dear fellow beings: death but brings us rest.” Look at the third stanza about the immediacy of his dying just around daybreak when skies brightened with its rays “through the cowl of gloom.” That cowl [capuz] symbolized hooded robed priests as well; he used it to fire an ironic parting shot at them. These were among the leading enslavers, oppressors and executioners whose faith killed him, he later accused in the penultimate stanza. There are many other words and phrases indicating death’s immediate imminence. All together they converge on a 30^th-finishing date, past midnight of the 29^th.

I would now call Adios his “Constancy Swan Song”. The retraction-respecting scholars, biographers and historians never tell you about the poem’s defiant yells to his constancies of clamrs and beliefs. They confine their descriptions to its tender, romantic and patriotic words. But it contains too defiant reaffirmations of promises, clamors, dreams, beliefs. Did you know he yelled, as in “Salud! te grita el alma que pronto va a partir….Oye el Postrer Adios…” Loud resounding cries these are. Like others in the 12^th and 13^th stanzas: There he yelled hauntingly, almost in creepy fashion, “vibrante y limpia nota sere” climaxing in his vow to be: “Constante… Constant I’ll be in repeating the essentials of my own creed!” To the end he remained so, topping off his defiant constancies with this denunciation of the oppressive church-and-theocracy, placing the blame for his death on it: “Voy donde no hay esclavos … I go where there are no slaves nor executioners and oppressors, Where faith does not kill…”

In the 12^th stanza this haunting song to constancy leaps out : “Clean note I’ll ever be for your hearing: In your…rumors, songs, moans, Constant I’ll be …” Significant cognate word that “rumor” is. He meant it literally, re-echoing the same word (in plural form) that he used in his December 15, 1896 Manifesto opposing the mostly disunited Tagalog uprising: “I hear rumors [rumores] that the disturbances have continued …” he wrote and protesting the fraudulent use of his name to wage war and shed blood wastefully. Likewise have key words and thoughts of his poetic last will and testament been misread, mistranslated, softened or added and glossed over in the various translations, as in the alleged Andres Bonifacio one, which split each stanza into two to make more room for doctoring with new words, thoughts, slants. That’s a kind of demolition of the poetic last will and testament, a dishonoring of it, whether intentionally or not. The lawyer-business friend who invited me to the lecture-book launch later voiced the same sentiment.

Whether we like it or not, and as the Philippine Star editorial of June 19, 2011 superbly summed up so well, Rizal from the Fourth and Third Worlds stood out uniquely as “he espoused nonviolent resistance to colonial rule long before Mahatma Gandhi did.” His first great Spanish biographer Retana would agree even as he failed to fathom Rizal’s bone-deep Masonic scientific humanism. He with nearly all of his foreign venerators and admirers highlighted his putting the virtues of truth, honesty, self-transformation, hard work and individual freedoms first in the huge long task of progressive nation-building.

CONCLUDING

By all means buy the distinguished Virgilio Almario’s new book dealing in part with the Adios and its Tagalog translations in addition to his. Compare with mine his treatment of the poem coming from the hero’s bone-deep core. You might as well buy John Nery’s too and judge who among us got that elusive core right. Send this to them and others who spoke at the late June 2011 International Rizal conference in the shadow of the still reigning retraction-respecting highly nationalistic paradigm. Addressing in conclusion a nation that does not even read its redeeming top hero, I say: “Come on, how about changing a lot more from your Third-World trapping ways and superstitions. Come on, how about your educated ones reading the rest of my cnx.org book, of which this is chapter seven.” Those who read it can even print the unique book rejected by Rizal’s own kind whom he wanted to dignifify above all else as humans. Yes, print it for their own profit without paying royalties, in order to share deep truths about him.

“This our nation needs more than ever to be re-imagined,” concluded the distinguished emeritus professor. I suppose from its deep moral and intellectual miring in Third World. But “Prof.”, as Rizal emphasized in his essays like “Indolencia” and “To the Malolos Women”, the re-imagining must include owning to their bitter truths, not continuing to blame Spain and America for faults, not continuing to tell lies about his core identity and core teachings. By venerating him with understanding for his bone-deep scientific humanism, even if you might disagree with his Masonic freethinker kind. Being radical and revolutionary against colonialism is all the rage in Rizal studies. Well, more than radical and revolutionary the scientific humanist Rizal was: as nonviolent campaigner for radical self-improvement of spirit and intelligence above all else, for self-dignification and nation-building towards the bar-raising First World.

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This work is licensed by Roberto Bernardo under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 3.0), and is an Open Educational Resource.

Last edited by Roberto Bernardo on Jul 25, 2011 2:59 am -0500.