"A
clear and innocent conscience fears nothing." Elizabeth I
By
Alex P. Vidal
PHILIPPINE history is replete with tragedies and oddities.
Among these historical
aberrations were the wrongful conviction and execution by Spanish colonizers of
a brilliant priest, who would have equaled if not eclipse Dr. Jose Rizal’s
achievements; and the state-sponsored murder of Leo Echegaray, who became a sacrificial
lamb to satisfy the bloodthirsty and grandstanding politicians.
Teary-eyed
until the final hours of his date with afterlife, Fr. Jose Burgos should not
have been in the execution chamber when the garrote snuffed out the lives of
the Gomburza — Fathers Mariano Gomez, Burgos, Jacinto Zamora on Feb. 17, 1872,
when Rizal was 11.
The
modern day carnival-like killing via lethal injection of Echegaray and several
other condemned inmates after him before death penalty was expunged, plunged
the only Christian country in Asia into moral abyss.
Convicted
of raping his own daughter, Echegaray was the first in line when death penalty
was imposed under the Erap administration.
Up
to his last breath, he maintained his innocence.
But
it was not his vacillation that made his execution repulsive in the eyes of
anti-death penalty advocates; it was when ecclesiastical interference failed to
dampen a presidential prerogative.
“Wala
akong kasalanan. Patawarin kayo ng Diyos,” was Echegaray’s farewell statement. (I am innocent. God will forgive you.)
MARTYR
Among
the three martyred priests, historians consider the conviction for rebellion of
the young Burgos as farce.
To
some historians, Burgos was an accidental hero.
“His
death, which is the fate of mortals but which made him immortal not only in
heaven but here on earth, was therefore not heroic,” wrote former Asiaweek copy
editor Manuel F. Martinez in his essay “The Ultimate in Intrigue: The
Extirpation of Burgos.”
“But
it must be conceded that his struggles and ideas throughout his life were not
accidental, but deliberate and willed, and as such he could not be dismissed as
a fortuitous hero.”
"Burgos’
total shock when brought before the garrote is understandable," observed
Martinez, "not just because, by his brilliance and personality, he was the
most promising and the best situated among all Filipinos, lay and cleric alike,
or because he was too young to die at 35."
When he started his
Filipinization fight with the friars, Burgos did not realize it would cost him
his life
According
to Martinez, Burgos “underestimated the power, and the evil, of his
adversaries.”
PLACID
Gomez
was super placid.
He
blessed with his hand the multitude of Filipinos gathered, “who took off their
hats to salute him and had fallen on their knees as he passed by.”
Antonio
Ma. Regidor, whose eyewitness account was described by Martinez as “a very
detailed and very partisan account,” grimly recalled that “Burgos was not
reconciled to his fate.”
When
he reached the stage and was asked to go up, Burgos paused and made a final
protest.
“But
for what? I am innocent. This is an iniquity.”
“My
God, I am innocent,” Burgos cried loudly while on the scaffold, seeing
thousands upon thousands of mournful and silent Filipino faces.
Like
Gomez, 73, who was calmed and resigned, Burgos eventually commended his spirit
to God. “Before the litany ended,” Martinez narrated, “he was dead, the garrote
being an instrument of torture and death that disposed of its victims in less
than a minute of breaking the neck bone.”
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