# Claro M. Recto

Claro Mayo Recto Jr. (February 8, 1890 – October 2, 1960) was a Filipino lawyer, jurist, writer, poet, author, columnist, and statesman who was the primary author of the 1935 Philippine Constitution, and a senator of the Philippines from 1931 until his death in 1960. Known as the "Father of the Philippine Constitution", the "Great Dissenter", and "Great Academician", he is remembered as a political maverick in the early Philippine government, a key figure in Philippine independence from the United States, a fierce opponent of U.S. neocolonialism in Asia in his later years, and as a staunch nationalist throughout his career.
Recto began his political career as the representative for the 3rd District of Batangas in 1919 and held the position until 1928, emerging as the most prominent member of the Democrata Party. He was elected as a senator to the 10th Philippine Legislature, where he opposed the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Act, and later became president of the 1934 Philippine Constitutional Convention that drafted the 1935 Constitution. Recto and future president Manuel L. Quezon personally presented the constitution to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who also appointed Recto as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines—the last to be appointed by the United States.
At the height of World War II, Recto was detained by the United States on charges of collaboration with the Japanese, but was nonetheless reelected to the Senate in 1941 with the highest number of votes among the 24 elected senators. He joined the KALIBAPI party during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, and served in President Jose P. Laurel's wartime cabinet. Recto was faced with treason and collaboration charges at the end of the war, but refused the amnesty issued by President Manuel Roxas, choosing to defend himself in court instead, and was ultimately acquitted of all charges.
He was reelected to the Senate in 1949 and in 1955, becoming an outspoken critic of continued American influence in Asia, and of Presidents Elpidio Quirino and Ramon Magsaysay, the latter of whom he decried as a “banana dictator” and “American puppet". Following Magsaysay's death in 1957, Recto was among several members of the NP who left the party in discontent with President Carlos P. Garcia. Recto established the Nationalist Citizens' Party with Lorenzo Tañada later that year and became its candidate in the 1957 presidential election, but lost.
In 1960, he was appointed by Garcia as Cultural Envoy with the rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary. He mysteriously died of a heart attack on October 2 that same year, in Rome, while on a diplomatic mission to Spain. It is widely believed that the United States Central Intelligence Agency may have a hand in his death.
He is the father of former Batasang Pambansa assemblyman Rafael Recto and grandfather of Secretary of Finance Ralph Recto.

## Early life and education

Recto was born in Tiaong, Tayabas (now known as Quezon province), Philippines, to educated, upper middle-class parents, Claro Recto Sr. of Rosario, Batangas, and Micaela Mayo of Lipa, Batangas. He studied Latin at the Instituto de Rizal in Lipa, Batangas, from 1900 to 1901. He continued his education at Colegio del Sagrado Corazón of Don Sebastián Virrey and completed his secondary education in 1905 at the age of 15. He moved to Manila to study at Ateneo de Manila where he consistently obtained outstanding scholastic grades, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree maxima cum laude in 1909. He received a Master of Laws degree from the University of Santo Tomás. He later received a Doctor of Laws degree honoris causa from Central Philippine University in 1969.
Recto married Ángeles Silos y Jamora on 10 February 1912.

## House of Representatives (1916–1928)

Recto launched his political career in 1916 as a legal adviser to the first Philippine Senate. In 1919, he was elected representative from the second district of Batangas.
Recto joined Juan Sumulong's opposition party, the Partido Democrata National (Democrata Party), and was its candidate for the office of Speaker of the House in the 1922 elections. The party won 25 seats, but Recto was defeated by the Nacionalista-Colectivista candidate Manuel Roxas, and instead became House Minority Floor Leader until 1925.

### 1924 Philippine Independence Mission

On July 17, 1923, all Filipino members of Governor-General of the Philippines Leonard Wood's cabinet and Council of State resigned en masse in the "1923 Philippine Cabinet Crisis", following prolonged tensions over Wood's perceived autocratic actions. The Democrata Party accepted Wood's stance on the crisis, for which then-Senate President Manuel L. Quezon labeled them as "traitorous" during the special senatorial election of 1923.
Meanwhile, when news of the crisis reached Washington in early 1924, support for Philippine autonomy surged in the 68th United States Congress, and a flood of congressional resolutions and bills ranging from immediate Philippine independence to complete autonomy with an option for freedom were introduced.
By March, a bill by Indiana Representative Louis W. Fairfield gained the most popularity. It proposed a commonwealth with an elected Filipino leader, a 25-year transition period, continued U.S. military bases, and American control over foreign relations, debt, and defense until full independence. Support for the bill proved overwhelming, though the rapid pace alarmed both the Coolidge administration and Filipino leaders. Wood was urged to publicly oppose Congress's hasty push for independence, to no avail.
Likewise, Quezon and senator Sergio Osmeña felt that—although Congress had meant well—the bill's terms were unsatisfactory and it was being advanced too quickly. They launched the 1924 Philippine Independence mission to the United States in an attempt to delay the Fairfield bill.
To ensure bipartisan support, Quezon invited Recto to join the mission, along with Osmeña and Resident Commissioners of the Philippines Isauro Gabaldon and Pedro Guevara. They arrived in early May, and after a private meeting between Quezon and US Secretary of War John W. Weeks, the Fairfield bill was successfully delayed. In the same year, Recto was admitted to the American Bar.
However, Recto, despite not being present at the meeting, had somehow acquired key documents of the exchange, and in November 1924, revealed that Quezon had accepted terms falling short of full independence. In doing this, Recto attempted to position the Democratas as defenders of immediate independence and take political revenge for Quezon's insult in 1923.
Recto's plot backfired, however, as Quezon and Osmeña managed to rally the legislature to their version of events. They insisted that they had rejected the Fairfield bill outright and would accept only full independence or continued "slavery" under American rule.
He again vied for the title of House Speaker in the 1925 elections, but would be defeated by Roxas once more, who was now under the newly-reunited Nacionalista Party.

### Hiatus and return to politics

In 1928, Recto temporarily retired from politics and dedicated himself to the teaching and practice of law, joining the Guevara, Francisco, & Recto law firm. He would describe the world of academia to be "restrictive and soporific" and reentered politics in 1931.

## Senator of the Philippines (1931–1960)
### First term (1931–1935)

He was elected senator from the Fifth Senatorial District in the 1931 Senate elections but simultaneously lost his bid for Senate President against the incumbent Quezon. Recto would go on to serve as the Senate Minority Floor Leader until 1934, becoming known as the "one-man fiscalizer" during this period. Recto switched to the Nacionalista Party in the 1934 senate elections, and was subsequently elected Senate Majority Floor Leader.

#### Philippine independence (1934–1941)

The 1931 OsRox mission culminated in the Hare–Hawes–Cutting Act (1933), which established the Philippine Commonwealth as a transition government for 12 years and promised the country full independence on July 4, 1946. However, the act would also have required the Philippines to exempt American goods from customs duties and essentially allowed the indefinite retention of U.S. military and naval bases in the Philippines, as well as American imposition of high tariffs and quotas on Philippine exports such as sugar and coconut oil.
Opposition sparked in response to the controversial provisions, with the ruling Nacionalista Party dividing into two factions pending the act's ratification: Recto joined Quezon's faction (dubbed the "Antis") who opposed the act, and Osmeña's faction (the "Pros"), who supported it. In the end, the Philippine Legislature rejected the Act.
Quezon headed another Philippine Independence mission to the US in 1934, securing instead the passage of the Tydings–McDuffie Act, which established the Commonwealth as the transitional government of the Philippines, specified a framework for the drafting of a constitution, detailed a number of mandatory constitutional provisions, and required approval of the constitution by the U.S. President and by Filipinos. Prior to independence, the act allowed the U.S. to maintain military forces in the Philippines and to call all military forces of the Philippine government into U.S. military service. Finally, the act mandated U.S. recognition of the independence of the Philippine Islands as a separate and self-governing nation after a ten-year transition period.

#### 1934 Philippine Constitutional Convention

Recto presided over the assembly that drafted the Philippine Constitution in 1934–35 in accordance with the provisions of the Tydings–McDuffie Act and a preliminary step to independence and self-governance after a 10-year transitional period. He was the primary author of the constitution, thus becoming known as the "Father of the Philippine Constitution."
Together with Quezon, who was later elected the first president of the Commonwealth of the Philippines, Recto personally presented the 1935 Constitution to United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt. The consensus among many Philippine political scholars of today judges the 1935 Constitution as the best-written Philippine charter ever in terms of prose.

### Associate Justice

He was appointed Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines on July 3, 1935, by President Roosevelt, and would be the last Associate Justice appointed by the United States, holding the position until November 1, 1936.

### World War II (1939–1945), second term (1941-1946)

During World War II, Recto was arrested by the US colonial government for collaboration charges with the Japanese. Despite this, he ran for senator in the 1941 senatorial elections and reaped 1,084,003 votes, the highest number of votes among the 24 elected senators. However, Imperial Japan would invade on December 8, 1941, preventing the elected senators from taking oath. Thus, they were not seated until 1945.
By 1943, the Commonwealth established a government-in-exile in Washington, DC; however, many politicians stayed behind and collaborated with the occupying Japanese, among them Recto and then-Minister of Interior José P. Laurel. The Japanese installed Laurel as the President of the Second Philippine Republic on October 14, 1943. Recto was appointed as Commissioner of Education in 1942 and as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1943 to 1944. As Minister, he signed the Philippine-Japanese Treaty of Alliance alongside Japanese Ambassador to the Philippines Sozyo Murata on October 20, 1943.

#### Post-World War II

After the war, Recto, along with Laurel, Minister of Education Camilo Osías, and Senator Quintín Paredes, was taken into custody and tried for treason, but he successfully defended himself and was acquitted. He wrote a defense and explanation of his position in Three Years of Enemy Occupation (1946), which convincingly presented the case of the "patriotic" conduct of the Filipino elite during World War II.

### Third term (1949–1955)

On April 9, 1949, Recto attacked against the unfair impositions of the U.S. government in the Military Bases Agreement of March 14, 1947, and later in the Mutual Defense Treaty of Aug. 30, 1951, and especially the Tydings Rehabilitation Act, which required the enactment of the controversial parity-rights amendment to the constitution. He debated against U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr. on the question of U.S. ownership of military bases in the Philippines.
Recto was reelected to the Senate on November 8, 1949.

### Fourth term (1955–1960) and final years

In his later years, Recto denounced the influence and coercion of the Catholic Church on voters' decisions—the Philippines having a 90% Catholic majority at the time. In a 1958 article in "The Lawyer's Journal," Recto suggested a constitutional amendment to make the article on the separation of church and state clearer and more definitive. He also argued against the teaching of religion in public schools.
He was reelected to his fourth and final term in the Senate in 1955.
Recto also foresaw the demands of a fast-moving global economy and the challenges it would pose. In a speech on the eve of the 1957 presidential election, he petitioned all sectors of society and implored Philippine youth:
   The first task to participate seriously in the economic development of our country (is to) pursue those professions for which there is a great need during an era of rapid industrialization. Only a nationalistic administration can inspire a new idealism in our youth and, with its valid economic program, make our youth respond to the challenging jobs and tasks demanding full use of their talents and energies.
Recto was a staunch critic of the Magsaysay administration, especially with the Laurel-Langley Agreement. This led to his expulsion from the Nacionalista Party.$^{:43-44}$ He would then lose the election to incumbent president Carlos P. Garcia, winning just 8 percent of the vote. Garcia later appointed Recto as Cultural Envoy with the rank of Ambassador on a cultural mission to Europe and Latin America in 1960.

## Other activities
### Legal practice

Recto was known as an abogado milagroso (lawyer of miracles), a tribute to his many victories in the judicial court. He wrote a three-volume book on civil procedures, which, in the days before World War II was the standard textbook for law students.
His prominence as a lawyer paralleled his fame as a writer. He was known for his flawless logic and lucidity of mind in both undertakings.
Recto took part in many landmark cases. In "Hall v. Piccio" (G.R. No. L-2598), the landmark civil case involving Articles of Incorporation as a requisite to becoming a de facto corporation, Recto lost the case to Ramon Diokno and his son Jose W. "Ka Pepe'' Diokno. Recto and the former later collaborated and won in "Nacionalista Party v. Felix Angelo Bautista", against Felix Angelo Bautista, then the Solicitor-General of the Philippines.

### Writing

He was raised and educated in the Spanish language, his mother tongue alongside Tagalog, and he was also fluent in English. He initially gained fame as a poet while a student at the University of Santo Tomás when he published a book Bajo los Cocoteros (Under the Coconut Trees, 1911), a collection of his poems in Spanish. As a staff writer of El Ideal and La Vanguardia, he wrote a daily column, Primeras Cuartillas (First Sheets), under the pen name "Aristeo Hilario." They were prose and numerous poems of satirical pieces. Some of his works still grace classic poetry anthologies of the Hispanic world.
Among the plays he authored were La Ruta de Damasco (The Route to Damascus, 1918), and Solo entre las sombras (Alone among the Shadows, 1917), lauded not only in the Philippines, but also in Spain and Latin America. Both were produced and staged in Manila to critical acclaim in the mid-1950s.
In 1929, his article Monroismo asiático (Asiatic Monroism) validated his repute as a political satirist. In what was claimed as a commendable study in polemics, he proffered his arguments and defenses in a debate with Dean Máximo Kálaw of the University of the Philippines, where Kálaw championed a version of the Monroe Doctrine with its application to the Asian continent, while Recto took the opposing side. The original Monroe Doctrine (1823) was U.S. President James Monroe's foreign policy of keeping the Americas off-limits to the influence of the Old World, and states that the United States, Mexico, and countries in South and Central America were no longer open to European colonization. Recto was passionately against its implementation in Asia, wary of Japan's preeminence and its aggressive stance towards its neighbors.
In his deliberation, he wrote about foreseeing the danger Japan posed to the Philippines and other Asian countries. His words proved prophetic when Japan invaded and colonized the region, including the Philippines from 1942 to 1945.
His eloquence and facility with the Spanish language were recognized throughout the Hispanic world. The Enciclopedia Universal says of him: "Recto, more than a politician and lawyer, is a Spanish writer, and that among those of his race" (although he had Irish and Spanish ancestors), "there is not and there has been no one who has surpassed him in the mastery of the language of his country's former sovereign."

## Death

Recto died of a heart attack in Rome, Italy, on October 2, 1960, while on a cultural mission to Spain, where he was to fulfill a series of speaking engagements. His body was flown back to the Philippines to be buried in Manila North Cemetery.
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is suspected of involvement in his death. Recto, who had no known heart disease, met with two mysterious Caucasians in business suits before he died. United States government documents later showed that a plan to murder Recto with a vial of poison was discussed by CIA Chief of Station Ralph Lovett and the US Ambassador to the Philippines Admiral Raymond Spruance years earlier.

## Legacy

Recto is referred to by some as the "Great Academician" or the "finest mind of his generation". Teodoro M. Locsín of Philippines Free Press, defined Recto's genius:
   Recto is not a good speaker, no. He will arouse no mob. But heaven help the one whose pretensions he chooses to demolish. His sentences march like ordered battalions against the inmost citadel of the man's arguments and reduce them to rubble; meanwhile, his reservations stand like armed sentries against the most silent approach and every attempt at encirclement by the adversary. The reduction to absurdity of Nacionalista senator Zulueta's conception of sound foreign policy was a shattering experience; the skill that goes into the cutting of a diamond went into the work of demolition. There was no slip of the hand, no flaw in the tool. All was delicately, perfectly done... Recto cannot defend the indefensible, but what can be defended, he will see to it that it will not be taken.
Critics claim that Recto's brilliance is overshadowed by his inability to capture nationwide acceptance. His lack of popularity frequently saw him at the bottom of senate votes, and he sometimes lost the senate elections. He was seen as out of touch with the poor and only garnered less than nine percent of votes when he ran for the presidency in 1957. His appeal was limited to the intellectual elite and the nationalist minority of his time, though others argue that he was just too ahead of his time.
Political editorialist Manuel L. Quezon III, laments:
   Recto's leadership was the curious kind that only finds fulfillment from being at the periphery of power, and not from being its fulcrum. It was the best occupation suited to the satirist that he was. His success at the polls would be limited, his ability to mold the minds of his contemporaries was only excelled by Rizal's... But he was admired for his intellect and his dogged determination to never let the opposition be bereft of a champion, still, his opposition was flawed. For it was one that never bothered to transform itself into an opposition capable of taking power.
However, one possible explanation as to why Recto was never able to capture full national acceptance was because he dared to strongly oppose the national security interests of the United States in the Philippines, as when he campaigned against the US military bases in his country. During the 1957 presidential campaign, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) conducted black propaganda operations to ensure his defeat, including the distribution of condoms with holes in them and marked with `Courtesy of Claro M. Recto' on the labels.

## Family

Claro Mayo Recto had seven children in all: four children from his first marriage with Angeles Jamora Silos, and two sons with his second wife, Aurora Reyes. He is the grandfather of Ralph Recto.
His children with Angeles Silos were:
* María Clara Nena Recto Silos (December 29, 1912, Manila - November 16, 1979, Madrid)
* José Recto Silos (born December 8, 1914, Manila)
* Concepción Conchita or Chitang Recto Silos (December 7, 1915, Manila - c. 1970)
* José María Recto Silos (December 19, 1917, Manila – December 17, 1963, Manila)
* María Priscilla Chona Recto Silos (February 5, 1922, Manila - April 4, 1987, Manila)
His children with Aurora Reyes were:
* Rafael Reyes Recto (died 2008) Assemblyman during the Regular Batasang Pambansa, father of Ralph Recto.
* Claro Sebastián Clarito Reyes Recto.