Belarmino Dabalos Saguing
Rome, Italy 20 August, 2015
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| Andres Bonifacio Monument, Cry At Balintawak, Caloocan City (downloaded photo) |
For those who
passionately argue that Andres Bonifacio has suffered the double-edged sword
that is martyrdom-by-history, the Bonifacio Monument likewise attests to the
drawback a prominent memorial represents. The symbolism resonates: The nominal
hero of the masses, the plebeian idealist, the revolutionary from Tondo,
standing still in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the city—his gaze
forever fixed on the length of Avenida Rizal, the old road leading back to
Manila—indistinguishable in the background, unmistakable yet obscure in the
pocket of Caloocan skyline that has sprung up around it.
The monument has
stood for eighty years—first a solitary rise in the expanse of Caloocan, and
over the years a lynchpin for the city’s landscape to form itself around. It
has lent its very name to the area now dotted by establishments that had once
almost furtively crept toward it, and which now threaten to tower over its
Winged Victory perched forty-five feet from the ground. Glancing at the
monument enveloped in the shadows cast by these new and ever-newer buildings,
pedestrians and commuters circle around it, barely looking up, even as those in
vehicles consider it more obstacle than landmark. The Bonifacio Monument,
imposing yet graceful, thus manages to both serve as gateway and landmark to
the thousands that traverse it, and yet fades into the scenery for those who’ve
seen it far too often for far too long.
Nominally created on
October 23, 1933 by virtue of Governor-General Frank Murphy’s Executive Order
No. 452, the National Executive Committee for the Inauguration of the Andres
Bonifacio Monument undertook a ceremony steeped in Filipino symbolism that
would adorn every element of the day’s activities: whether the parade, or the
unveiling, or the inauguration.
As soon as the
Speaker of the House Quintin Paredes arrived for the inauguration of the
monument, the three women who represented the three principal islands of the
archipelago came forward, accompanied by members of the Katipunan. In 1933,
this meant three bent but proud men dressed in their Katipunero best—Lt. Col. Venancio de Jesus,
Capt. Inocencio Peralta, and Lt. Dionisio Buensuceso. The six positioned themselves around the
monument to form a triangle. The women stepped forward, escorted by designated
members of Congress, to unveil the monument to the crowd that had gathered to
witness this tribute to Andres Bonifacio.
The Bonifacio Monument
was both valedictory of the Revolution of 1896 and pledge to future generations
that independence would one day be restored. The unveiling of the monument
itself was the culmination of a decades-long movement to commemorate not just
the father of the revolution, but to reassert the continuing aspiration for
independent nationhood of the Filipinos.
The
political context of the campaign to build the monument is crucial to
understanding the identity of the monument as both vindication and pledge. In 1901,
the Americans passed the Sedition Act (Act No. 292), prohibiting Filipinos from
advocating either independence or separation from the United States. Ahead of
permitting the election of an all-Filipino lower house—the Philippine Assembly,
due to take office in October 16, 1907—the Americans noticed that in the
campaign for the election of assemblymen, the Philippine flag came to be
prominently displayed: one such rally took place in Caloocan, rich in memories
of 1896.
Alarmed
American associations passed a resolution in August 23, 1907—a month redolent
with memory for Filipinos—demanding the proscription of the Filipino flag. And
so among the last acts of the American-dominated Philippine Commission was to
ban the Philippine flag, anthem, and symbols of the Katipunan and the First
Republic, on September 6, 1907.
Even
if hemmed in by a thicket of legislation, Filipinos kept pursuing independence:
the first efforts concentrating on symbolic actions to assert that the
aspiration for nationhood had not dimmed. On June 19, 1908, Speaker Sergio
Osmeña formally pledged the legislature to pursuing Philippine independence.
Assemblymen would pursue legislation at home and abroad to secure a pledge of
independence, while reclaiming the symbols of nationhood. And so even as
members of the legislature filed bill after bill to legalize the Philippine
flag, others—led by a prominent veteran of the Katipunan, Guillermo
Masangkay—literally had a representative forum in which to propose that a
monument be erected to Bonifacio’s memory.
By
1911, a monument (“El Grito del Revolucion,” with a generic Katipunero whose
image has come to be indelibly stamped in our popular culture as the Supremo
himself) was built in Caloocan (though it has since been transferred to the
front of Vinzons Hall, in UP Diliman) not as a government-approved, or funded,
memorial, but as a private initiative. Only a year later, in 1912, would the
Rizal Monument be unveiled. The question would then shift to who would be
honored in only the second national monument to be dedicated to a Filipino.
It
would be Bonifacio and the effort would be pursued in a methodical manner. On
February 5, 1915, the Philippine Assembly passed Act No. 2494, which
appropriated funds for public works and monuments. In August 29, 1916, the
United States Congress enacted the Jones Law making, Philippine independence a
question of not if, but when— and replacing the American-dominated Philippine
Commission with an all-Filipino Senate, which was inaugurated in October of
that year. The coast was clear. On February 23, 1918, Act No. 2760 was passed,
which approved the building of a memorial to Bonifacio, as well as the creation
of national committee to oversee it. A year and a half later, the Philippine
flag and anthem were finally legalized.
A
decade spent in fierce clashes between Filipino politicians and American
Governors-General would pass until, on the occasion of Bonifacio’s 66th birth
anniversary in 1929, at 5:45 p.m., the cornerstone of the monument was
ceremonially installed by Mrs. Aurora Quezon, the wife of the highest-ranking
Filipino official at the time, Senate President Manuel L. Quezon.
“The
Bonifacio Monument,” Alcazaren writes, “was intended to sit at its site
specifically to commemorate the historic spark ignited there and that led to
the culminating events of 1898.” Moreover, the site was a perfect counterpoint
to the monument of Rizal in Luneta: The two leading figures of the Philippines’
emancipation from Spain would bracket Manila—the national man of letters down
South by the sea, and the father of the Philippine revolution up North—not
unlike sentries.
Caloocan used to be part of Tondo until 1815 when it became a
municipality. The town’s growth surged after the completion of the
Manila-Dagupan railway in 1892. It was there, in August 23, 1896, that Andres
Bonifacio led the famous cry that sent the clear message of resistance to
Spanish rule. For several years after, Caloocan was in the thick of the fight;
first against the Spanish, then quickly against the Americans. By the turn of
the century, the terror of war turned into reluctant acquiescence and Caloocan
fell into the new colonizer’s sphere of influence. [...] Manila was slowly
filling out and parts of the Daniel Burnham master plan for the city was taking
shape. One of the main roads leading out of the city was Rizal Avenue. The
avenue’s extension was to link it with the highway leading north (now known as
the MacArthur Highway). A junction was formed with these two and a
circumferential road known as Route 54 (now EDSA). This junction gave the
opportunity for a rotunda and hence, a perfect setting for a monument, an entry
statement for the city as well as an opportunity to commemorate the heroes and
the events that occurred in Caloocan.
“The
Bonifacio Monument,” Alcazaren writes, “was intended to sit at its site
specifically to commemorate the historic spark ignited there and that led to
the culminating events of 1898.” Moreover, the site was a perfect counterpoint
to the monument of Rizal in Luneta: The two leading figures of the Philippines’
emancipation from Spain would bracket Manila—the national man of letters down
South by the sea, and the father of the Philippine revolution up North—not
unlike sentries.
Tolentino’s aesthetic would
influence numerous Filipino sculptors, many of them having studied under him at
the UP School of Fine Arts. One of these students was Anastacio Caedo, his star
pupil, assistant, and protegé. Caedo would be Tolentino’s right-hand man in the
creation of the Bonifacio Monument, the two leading a team of sculptors that
toiled in a studio garden in Malate. The Bonifacio Monument was thus,
expectedly, a collaborative effort that sought to realize Tolentino’s singular
vision: The construction of the central column, including the base, was done by
the architect Andres Luna de San Pedro (son of the ilustrado hero Juan Luna,
and the chairman of the jurors that chose Tolentino’s design); the pedestal and
shaft were carved in granite imported from Germany. The sculptor Francesco
Riccardo Monti, Italian by birth, would likewise lend his expertise in the
forging of the 23 bronze figures (cast in Italy) that served as the memorial’s
central element. (Monti, too, would provide a postwar link, in terms of monuments:
Monti designed the mourning angels that surmount the Quezon Monument—itself
designed by Federico Ilustre, who started his career as a draftsman for Juan Nakpil.)
If the tableaux in
the Rizal monument are static and sparse, those in the Bonifacio Monument are
imbued with energy and emotion. Each figure is modeled with classical
perfection in composition, but charged with
the fierce sentiments of a romanticist—and all of them fashioned with a
realist’s careful and conscientious attention to detail. Emilio Jacinto’s face
is frozen in a battle-cry right behind Bonifacio; on the other side of the
obelisk are the priests Mariano Gómez, José Apolonio Burgos, and Jacinto
Zamora. Caedo would serve as a model of one of the Katipuneros—the one that
cradled a dead infant, with a sheet thrown over its still face. (Caedo, too, is
among those considered to be the model for the UP Oblation, as he was
Tolentino’s assistant during its creation.) Tolentino also modelled after Mrs.
Angela Sison (wife of Senator, and later Defense Secretary, Teofilo Sison) the
young woman that lay prostrate before an angry old man; Guillermo Masangkay’s
role in the revolution and the realization of this monument to its nominal
father would be forever immortalized as a Katipunero tearing up a cedula.
Nearly unseen unless from a
considerable distance from the monument, the winged figure of Victory rises 45
feet in the air, the granite tower her pedestal. Patterned after the Winged
Victory of Samothrace, the triumph it evokes only underscores the value of the
tumult and the struggle and the fury that holds her up. That in the centuries
of subjugation, for every mother who had held her dead child, every laborer who
defiantly tore proof of Spain’s ownership, for every boy from Tondo who dared form
a nation—the goddess of Victory looked on. We had won.
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Reference:
Agoncillo, Teodoro. The Revolt of the Masses. Quezon City:
University of the Philippines, 1956. Print.
Alcazaren, Paulo. "Wait a Monument." Philippine
Star. March 9, 2002.http://www.philstar.com/modern-living/153242/wait-monument/.
Chua, Michael Charleston. “Shouting in Bronze: The Lasting
Relevance of Andres Bonifacio and His Monument in Caloocan.” Artes de las
Filipinas.http://www.artesdelasfilipinas.com/archives/52/shouting-in-bronze-the-lasting-relevance-of-andres-bonifacio-and-his-monument-in-caloocan.
Guillermo E. Tolentino. Facing History. Kalipunan ng Sining
at Kultura ng Pasig, Inc., 2003. Print.
Richardson, Jim. “Katipunan: Documents and Studies.”
Katipunan: Documents and Studies.http://www.kasaysayan-kkk.info/.
May, Glenn Anthony. Inventing A Hero: The Posthumous
Re-creation of Andres Bonifacio. Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1997. Print.
Melendez, Christian Bernard A. “A Moment for the Monument.”
National Historical Commission of the Philippines. March 22, 2013. http://nhcp.gov.ph/a-moment-for-the-monument/.
Ocampo, Ambeth R. Bonifacio’s Bolo. Manila: Anvil Publishing
Inc., 1995. Print.
CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art, Volume IV: Philippine
Visual Arts.
Programa de la Inauguracion del Monumento de Andres
Bonifacio
RECOMMENDED
READING AND RELATED DOCUMENTS:
Bonifacio
2013: Featuring an interactive multimedia timeline of the life, works, and
achievements of Andres Bonifacio
Imprinting Andres Bonifacio: From Portrait to Peso: How
well do we know Andres Bonifacio? An essay on the different artistic renditions
of the Supremo through the years.
The Founding of the Katipunan: An essay on the
revolutionary secret society’s history, structure, and membership, as well as a
list of members who were present in Balintawak at the outbreak of the
Philippine Revolution in August 1896.
Evolution of the Revolution: A series of maps tracing the
progression of the Philippine Revolution from 1896 to the First Philippine
Republic.
Tejeros Convention: An essay on the Tejeros Convention, and
the events leading up to it, as well as a series of maps that illustrate in
detail the various offensives and counter offensives launched by both Filipino
and Spanish forces during the revolution.
The
Trial of Andres Bonifacio: A retrospective on the trial of Andres Bonifacio
as the natural progression from the events and the outcome of the Tejeros Convention.
Transcript of the Trial of Andres Bonifacio: A
collection of accounts and documents related to the trial, such as the
testimony of Andres Bonifacio himself.
Origin of the Symbols of our National Flag: An essay
tracing the origins of the Philippine flag’s design elements.
Flags and Banners of the Colonial Era: An infographic
timeline tracing the various flags and banners that have flown over the
Philippine islands since 1521.
[AUDIO] Alerta!
Katipunan: Listen to the march of the Katipunan.
[AUDIO] Sa
Marahas Na Manga Anak Nang Bayan: Listen to Andres Bonifacio’s manifesto,
as read by Mario O’Hara.
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