Whence comes another? : our countryman Claro Mayo Recto

Title

Creator

Guererro, Leon

Language

English

Source

Volume XII (No. 11) November 1960

Year

1960

Subject

Ambassadors

Diplomats

Speeches, addresses, etc.

Filipino Nationalism

Recto, Claro Mayo

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Fulltext

GOOD RM DWG Entered ■eeend cIm* mail matter at the Manila Poat Office on Dec. 7. 1955 NOVEMBER 1960 VOL. XII MANILA, PHILIPPINES No. 11 Whence comes another? Our Countryman CLARO MAYO RECTO By Leon Guerrero Philippine Ambassador Ido not speak as an ambas sador this afternoon, no one is an ambassador in his own country. I speak as a friend and as a partisan of Claro Mayo Recto. No man incarnated the spirit of Filipino nationalism as much and as long as he did. He was one of those few who are privi leged to re-discover youth and to be’ong to two generations. He lived long enough to reform the Third Republic; he was not too young to remember the First. Indeed he told me that one of his earliest recollections was the sound, overheard in the night, of his mother weeping as she was interrogated by the Americans during the pacifica tion of Batangas — a memory that is not wholly without sig nificance. He grew up under the new American regime, but was one of the last generation to imbibe the European culture of the Spanish Jesuits, the culture that had bred the Revolution. He also became a poet and an essayist in Spanish, and Filipino writers in Spanish were the heirs of Rizal, their poetry a nostalgia for our brief moment of independence, their prose a protest against the Babylonian cap ivity of the national cul ture, as they understood and remembered it. Thereafter, he and Manuel Luis Quezon, Sergio Osmena, Rafael Palma, Jose Laurel, Manuel Roxas, and others, sometimes in partisan opposi tion to one another, but always united in the pursuit of the national objective, were leaders in the parliamentary struggle for independence that was the expression of Filipino national ism in the decades before the Japanese War. It was a youth ful nationalism, untroubled by doubts and apprehensions, at tractively native, when we look back on it, because of its self confidence. That was a time when Que1 zon could exclaim with a toss of his handsome head: “Better, a government run like hell by Filipinos than a govern ment run like heaven by the Americans.*’ It was a time when Quezon, Recto, and the “antis” could successfully reject the Hare-Hawes-Cutting inde pendence act because, apart from other more partisan con siderations, the law established American bases in the Philip pines. They would not, they said, feel really free if, riding along the Boulevard, they were to see the American flag waving over the Plaza Militar. It was also a time .when, under the presidency of Recto, the Consti tutional Convention could draft a charter reserving to Filipinos alone the right to enjoy the na tional patrimony. How idylic that time must seem to the present day nation alist when even the American High Commissioner and threat ened economic interests could not induce the Filipino leaders to undertake what was euphe mistically termed a “realistic re-examination” o f indepen dence! Yet already forces wer,e at work that would undermine, nationalism in its popular foun dations. A new generation was growing up in schools that taught more American than Filpatriotism in the colonial terms of a double allegiance. It was an English-speaking generation whose heroes and exemplars were Washington and Lincoln, who spoke of “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” a formula that was understood to justify gov ernment of the Filipinos by the Americans. Rizal, in compari son, was a figure that grew in creasingly dim and meaningless, a good man who had said "morir es descansar’* when he was shot by the wicked Spaniards in a struggle that no longer had any significance in a modem free society. Few knew the words of the Filipino national anthem, 4 Panorama but almost every youngster could sing “God Bless America.” One wonders if Recto and his fellow nationalists of the time realized that they were losing the new generation to Holly wood, Tin Pan Alley, and Ma dison Avenue, and that the new appetite, habits, and ambitions bred by American free trade — the general euphoria induced by economic prosperity under a regime that, though alien, was politically democratic — would sap the vitality of Filipino na tionalism in its charter as an historic protest against foreign rule. A ERTAINLY THERE WERE ** symptoms enough of the change. NEPA, for example, the movement for national eco nomic protectionism, never got very much farther than a flurry of interest in folk arts and cot tage industries; while Roxas, the very idol of the new Am erica-oriented generation, pas sionately handsome in a tieless cerrada jacket, soon wearied of rallying his new, his Bagong Katipunan. The war and enemy occupa tion deepened the disenchant ment. Quezon’s proposal from Corregidor to declare the Phil ippines independent and neutral was a last despairing gesture of Filipino nationalism that was abruptly rejected and penitent ly withdrawn. The generation of Wenceslao Vinzons and Ra mon Magsaysay, to mention only the dead, was fighting bravely and loyally under two flags, while a cynical enemy was using the nationalist slo gans to mask the most sangui nary and rapacious exploitation in our history; and the old na tionalists, from Emilio Aguinaldo and Artemio Ricarte to Laurel and Recto himself, gave the appearance of believing in a mythical independence and a powerless Second Republic, in order to use them as a shield to protect the people from con scription and other extortions and excesses of the enemy. When the Americans return ed, it must have seemed that Filipino nationalism, as distin guished from colonial double allegiance, was at its lowest ebb. An exhuberant gratitude for liberation from a brutal slave master, as much as a pathetic economic prostration, and the obsessive need for some re-as surance against a new aggres sion, led to the parity amend ment of the Constitution of ap palling one-sidedness. But nobody could do any thing much about it, or really wanted to. Everyone was much too happy with the G.I.’s and their jeeps, Virginia cigarettes, and K-rations, and it seemed almost callous ingratitude to haul down the good old Stars and Stripes and leave the Fili November i960 5 pino flag, lonely, and looking rather lost and forlorn over the ruins of Manila. Indeed the first President of the Third Re public proclaimed that his poli cy would be to “follow in the wake of America,” America the Beautiful, America the Bounti ful. But nationalism was not dead. The old Nacionalista Party fought the parity amend ment to the Constitution and the election of a number of Na cionalista senators had to be annulled to secure ratification of the bases agreement. In 1947 Camilo Osias won a signi ficant election to the Senate; in 1949 Laurel stood for the pres idency of the Republic with Recto at the head of his sena torial ticket. If Filipino nationalism now entered a new phase it was al most entirely the work of Claro Recto. His party was fighting the elections on the traditional front: graft and corruption. Recto, almost alone, decided to fight in the field of foreign po licy, and, inevitably, national ism. I had the privilege of be ing associated with him in that campaign, and I remember that it was opened with a memora ble indictment of what he con sidered the colonial party’s for eign policy of mendicancy and subservience to the United States. I know that he was fully aware of the powerful enmities he would arouse, the unforgiv ing rancour, the brooding hat red. He was also aware, al though perhaps not so keenly, of the inevitable indifference of the voters towards foreign af fairs, and of his own country men’s loving identification of their interests with those of the former sovereign, providential liberator, and seemingly gener ous protector. He did not care. It may be said that he could 1 afford not to care. In many ways he was in a unique posi tion which made him perhaps the only Filipino of our times capable of taking the leadership of the nationalist resurgence. For, in an acquisitive society where status was fixed by wealth, he had more than inde pendent means, and yet was never corrupted by greed. In a society where politics was the source of all power and in fluence, he had a personal pres tige and popularity that could defy party machines, and yet never succumbed to the tempta tion of using it for personal ad vantage. In a society hypno tised by dogmas and slogans, he had a mind of his own and had the courage to speak it out. In a conformist society he was a dissenter; in a frivolous socie ty he was a thinker; in a cleri cal society he was a Galileo who 6 Panorama did not recant. In the Philip pine zoo, with its exhibitionist monkeys, idle peacocks, trained parrots, and predatory hawks, he was an uncaged lion. Yet even he had to make sacrifices. He was a genius in the law yet his nationalist crusade was bound to lose him clients; he was true to his reli gion yet his sermons on the na tionalist gospel offended the pharisees. I am convinced that he never really hoped to be president; when he assumed the leadership of Filipino na tionalism, he was consciously renouncing the leadership of the nation. For he was an old poli tician and he knew that politi cians should make as few ene mies as possible; he made ma ny, deliberately and gladly, for the cause in which he believed. He was a man who should be judged by the enemies he made. Their names were Ignorance, Apathy, Timidity, Servility; Op portunism in a white shirt and tie, Hypocrisy in a barong Ta galog, Bigotry in a cassock; Am bition, Intolerance, Greed. He fought them all, and was proud of his wounds. Perhaps we realize only im perfectly what he achieved in the decade between 1949 and 1960. We are apt to take for granted now the attitudes which, were considered heretical and subversive. It was he who first question ed our blind subservience in foreign affairs and advocated an independent policy based on na tional self-interest; he who first warned that a small nation should tend its own garden rath er than meddle in the quarrels of the great. He challenged the sufficiency of the guarantees against aggres sion; he demanded the revision of the bases agreement to res tore national sovereignty and dignity, he denounced the cyni cal infringements of that sov ereignty and dignity, he de nounced the cynical infringer ments of that sovereignty which instituted in the Philip pines a state within a state. It was he who first inquired into the reality of foreign aid and its desirability, he who first demanded the industrialisation which he saw as the only found ation of economic independence. If we are now receiving repa rations from Japan, it is because he opposed the ratification of the Dulles peace treaty until the principle of reparations was accepted; if the Filipinos are again first in their own country it is largely because he never relented in his advocacy of the principles of the Constitution, and if our youth are begining to re-discover our nationalist past it is gospels in their hands in defiance of what he called the most numerous Church. November 1960 7 The true measure of his B achievement is the trans formation of the national char acter and climate that he brought about almost alone. Who would have thought, at the height of the colonial party’s as cendancy in 1949, that a time would come when a Filipino provincial fiscal would dare to call for the arrest and surrender of military visitors and their mercenaries, and be backed by the authorities of the Republic! Who would have thought then that the time would come when the president himself of the co lonial party would be reported as denying that he was pro-Am erican and insisting that he was only pro-Filipino! The nationalism of the pre sent administration is the lega cy of Claro Recto. His whole life was a testament bequeath ing to his people the re-invigo rated tradition of Filipino na tionalism. We are all his heirs, and may God give us the strength not to repudiate the inheritance, with all its onerous obligations; When I last saw him in Lon don he recounted to me that in his campaign for the presidency he had used an historical paral lel to explain the need for a na tionalist leadership. God, he had told our people, guided the des tiny of nations. Thus, the Filipi nos of the generation of the Re volution may well have wonder ed why God had permitted Rizal, the very embodiment of Fi lipino nationalism, to be shot by the Spaniards at that time of trial. The answer was that Rizal had served his purpose; he had awakened the Filipinos to a con sciousness of their identity as a nation. But the needs of the people had changed; Rizal did not believe that the time was ripe for revolution, and so he had been taken away to en able Bonifacio and Aguinaldo to lead the Filipino nation in the armed struggle for indepen dence. In the same way God hed taken away the well-be loved Ramon Magsaysay with his touching faith in America, in the prime of life and at the height of his powers, and a more nationalist leadership had unexpectedly emerged. Now, thinking back on it, I wonder what Recto would have said about his own death if he could have foreseen it. What is the hidden purpose of his sudden, ironic, heartbreaking disappearance from the scene? What turn of the plot is to be expected? What new protago nist is to appear upon the stage? Eor the play is not yet endr ed. Filipino nationalism has not yet attained its natural objective of a society where the sovereign powers of government will be wholly used to secure Panorama the rights and welfare of all the Filipinos. It has been truly said that Claro Mayo Recto’s place in history is assured. He was a le gend in his life time. Few men are, as he is, mourned for when they die because a cause dies a little with them, and for whom history itself closes a chapter. It is superfluous to pass judg. ment on him. What we must fear is the judgment that will be passed on us, his contempora ries and successors, for we Fili pinos shall be measured by his ideals, and his struggles and sac rifices for their attainment. “How terrible it is to die in a foreign country!” he said before ¥ ¥ he died. How much more terri ble to die for a foreign country, and how still more terrible to dis for one’s own country when the sacrifice is spurned. May it not be said that he lived for a lost cause, that, as someone has put it, he was the last of a generation. May it not be said that he spent himself in a meaningless battle, to save a nation that refused to repent and be saved, and clung to its sins and sordid possessions, a nation that no longer believed itself to be a nation. If the cause of Filipino nationalism should die with him, then it will de serve to die. ¥ How Old Is the Egg? Eighty-million-year-old dinosaur eggs, each about the size of a human head, were discovered around Jacou and Clapiers, in Southern France, it was learned. Professor M. Mattauer, of the Montpellier Geo logical Institute, found the eggs in a deposit of sandstone. The region apparently was a favorite egg-lay ing spot for dinosaurs, the giant reptiles of the sec ondary era. The institute has appealed to the inhabitants of the region to inform it of any other dinosaur remains. Previously, dinosaur eggs have been found prin cipally in the region of Aix-en Provence, Southern France, and in Mongolia. November 1960

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