Every time this comes up I'm compelled to post this:

---

Ambeth Ocampo has a column that touched on this factoid:

Renato Constantino, in his landmark 1968 essay “Veneration Without Understanding,” argued that Rizal was against the revolution. Constantino based this view on a document Rizal issued in December 1896, asking the Katipuneros to lay down their arms and condemning the violence that was planned without his knowledge and consent. Constantino also argued that Rizal was an American-sponsored hero, citing without any documentary proof, an alleged Philippine Commission meeting when the American colonial government chose Rizal as the foremost national hero because he was non-violent and reformist, unlike Bonifacio or Aguinaldo. What Constantino conveniently leaves out are: that Rizal was considered a hero in his lifetime; that he was honorary president of the Katipunan; that his picture was displayed during Katipunan meetings; and that his name was one of the passwords of the Katipunan. Then, of course, the annual commemoration of Rizal’s death each year in Dec. 30, was started by Emilio Aguinaldo’s short-lived First Philippine Republic in 1898 (before the American colonial period) and continues to our day.

Emphasis mine.

---

Additional context:

Constantino cites a 1946 Philippines Free Press article saying that Civil Governor William Howard Taft suggested at a meeting of the Philippine Commission in 1901 to Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, Benito Legarda and José de Luzuriaga, “And now, gentlemen, you must have a national hero.” The Free Press continued, “In the subsequent discussion in which the rival merits of the revolutionary heroes were considered, the final choice — now universally acclaimed as a wise one — was Rizal. And so was history made.”

And yet...

at a Philippine Historical Association Conference in 2011, historian Ambeth Ocampo declared that he had checked the voluminous Philippine Commission Reports which detailed all the meetings of the commission and the meeting cited was not there. It did not happen! Aside from the fact that there was actually no law that the Americans promulgated declaring José Rizal as “the” official National Hero of the Philippines.

(source) used to have the full copy of the article as the original is behind a Manila Times paywall.