A Life Profiled: Andres Bonifacio
“Kaya, O mga kababayan! Ating idilat ang nabulag na kaisipan, at kusang igugol sa kagalingan ang ating lakas sa tunay at lubos na pag-asa na magtagumpay sa minimithing kaginhawan ng bayan tinubuan.” – Andres Bonifacio, Ang Dapat Mabatid ng mga Tagalog.
He is called the Great Plebeian, the Supremo and Founder of the Katipunan, a tragic hero. There is no law mandating the study of his life, though there’s a Bonifacio Monument built to memorialize his contribution for spearheading the overthrow of Spain’s colonial rule of the Philippines on 23 August 1896.
When I was growing up while playing baril-barilan, we used to recite the following about him aimed at the losers:
Andres Bonifacio, matapang na tao
Natama sa ulo, hindi tumakbo
Natama sa mata, hindi tumakbo
Natama sa utin, tumakbong matulin.
And laughter ensued to indicate the game was over. I was caught up in the frenzy of the moment rather than be cognizant how belittling those words were to a national hero.
As I started my university education in Manila in the early months of 1972, the student protest movements were heating up. There were study groups analysing and plays depicting the injustices and corruptions in the country under the Marcos government. But I was not radicalized enough to participate. I was just a passive observer, so to speak. Then Martial Law was proclaimed on 23 September 1972 and schools were closed until further notice. I was forced to come back home.
While perusing my home’s meagre collection of books, I came across two books that piqued my interest. One was a thick book by Leo Tolstoy entitled War and Peace; the other was Teodoro A. Agoncillo’s The Revolt of the Masses: The Story of Bonifacio and the Katipunan. From my short encounter with the radical students in my university, The Revolt of the Masses was a must-read book. I still could hear their bold praise of the masses in a song: “Ang masa, ang masa lamang, ang siyang tunay na bayani!” But I chose to read War and Peace instead. Then I forgot Agoncillo’s book altogether until I came home to visit the Philippines with my family in February 1996, after being away for 19 years when I immigrated to Canada on 4 September 1977. I was surprised to see the book still in readable condition, although the pages looked worn and brownish. I took it with me back to Canada and it’s been sitting in one of my bookshelves ever since still unread.
As I have more time now than ever and whenever I see the book, it’s been urging me to read it, perhaps as a compensation for my childhood irreverence of Bonifacio. It is time to know him better.
Right from the start, Agoncillo, in his Foreword, warns the reader “that it is practically impossible for any one man to write a fairly complete story of Bonifacio’s life.” It means nobody knows him that much, even those who were close to him. Agoncillo claims that he “tried hard to pump dry his living contemporaries to obtain necessary and important information – to no avail!” So in tackling a more comprehensive picture of Andres Bonifacio with scant materials available, Agoncillo has to rely on Bonifacio’s legacy, that is, the Katipunan. Agoncillo explains that Bonifacio “could not have been greater than the Katipunan. Nor could he have arisen above it. To understand him, one must understand the Katipunan.”
Agoncillo affords just one chapter (Chapter Five: Canes and Paper Fans, pp.63 –75) to describe Bonifacio’s personal life. What have we learned? That Andres Bonifacio was born on 30 November 1863 (his birth anniversary is celebrated in the Philippines as a national public holiday), his young parents were Catalina de Castro and Santiago Bonifacio, in Azcarraga Street in Tondo, Manila, in one of the “houses on this street were of the poorest. They stood on bamboo stilts that looked like the femurs of skeletons – naked, ugly, unhygienic.” His parents died young and Andres, being the eldest son, was forcibly pushed to be the head of the family which comprised of three brothers (Ciriaco, Procopio and Troadio) and two sisters (Espiridiona and Maxima). Because he was gifted by nature with a beautiful penmanship and developed a skill in craftsmanship, Bonifacio made canes and paper fans as a way of making a living, as well as posters for businesses. When he was a teen-ager, he was employed as a clerk-messenger by Fleming and Company. Due to his diligence and honesty, he was promoted as a sales agent selling rattan, tar and other products of the company. He transferred to Fressell and Company as a sales agent for better salary.
Because Bonifacio had finished primary school, he could definitely able to read. He made himself well-versed in Tagalog and self-taught in Spanish with the few books he could afford and pored over them in the “flickering lamplight.” He read the Spanish translation of Eugene Sue’s Wandering Jew, Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, and Alexandre Duma’s The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, as well as Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. He was also familiar with the Ruins of Palmyra and the book on the French Revolution which perhaps fired his imagination and led him to be sensitive to the dismal social, political, religious, and economic conditions of the country.
He married his neighbour named Monica who contracted leprosy a year later and died without child. He didn’t grieve his loss that long, for in late 1892 he married an 18-year old beauty from Kalookan, Gregoria de Jesus. They had an infant son born in early 1896 but died of small pox. Because Bonifacio was now deeply involved with the Katipunan, he married Gregoria again in accordance with the rites of the Katipunan in March 1893. On the same night, Gregoria was initiated into the women’s chapter of the Katipunan. She chose Lakangbini as her symbolic name. She was in charge of storing the papers, revolvers, seals, and other properties of the Katipunan.
There was no doubt that Bonifacio was the driving force in forming the secret society known as the Katipunan. He was always mindful of his limitations due to his poor upbringing and adamant to take the title of Supreme Head of the Council. But when the two previous presidents (Arellano and Basa) failed in their duties, Bonifacio had to take over and “displayed an audacity and energy, fused with a clear intelligence, that made him dominate his fellow members.” Where better men succumbed to failures, Bonifacio showed a strong “will-power that overcame the indignities of poverty and a quiet personality that invited the respect even of his superiors in intellectual attainments.” The Katipunan thrived to become a militant entity and expanded throughout the Tagalog region.
There was much anticipation by the members of the Katipunan that their secret society would soon be revealed. So they made plans to be prepared. Rumours were circulating about their existence and amplified, of course, by the friars. But the military authorities, ever so mindful of the friars’ trickery and manipulation, wanted proofs. It came in a form of confession and was gifted to Fr. Mariano Gil of Tondo. He found the hidden lithograph stone and other documents of the Katipunan.
The revolution started with the sound of fury but the first skirmish ended in a whimper. With a thousand revolutionaries led by Bonifacio against forty civil guards and infantrymen, they fought and retreated with two rebels and one civil guard dead as a result. As days moved forward, “the spark of the revolution grew into a conflagration of tremendous power and the masses, who had been impatient and excited throughout the months before the discovery of the Katipunan, plunged into the combat, armed with nothing but sharpened bolos, daggers, and bare fists, fortified by the robust hope of a future in which life would be free and untrammeled.”
Meanwhile, in Cavite, the Magdalos, (a faction of the Katipunan in the region; the other was the Magdiwangs) led by Emilio Aguinaldo, were winning their battles. Overnight, General Miong, as he was fondly called by the people of Cavite, became an idol.
Bonifacio, on the other hand, was losing his battles. As always, the spoils of war go to the victors. When Bonifacio attempted to form another revolutionary government as a result of a rift in his effort to mediate between the Magdalos and Magdiwangs, his fate as a traitor to the revolutionary cause was sealed. An order was signed by Aguinaldo for his arrest. He was injured, faced trial, found guilty, and received a death sentence by firing squad. He was executed, together with his brother Procopio, on 10 May 1987, in the mountains of Maragondon.
In a climate of revolutionary upheaval, was the execution of Bonifacio justified? I’ll leave the question to be answered by people more intelligent and knowledgeable than I am.
Is Bonifacio a greater national hero than Rizal? Or the First President than Aguinaldo? These questions, I think, only serve our argumentative nature, though there are some who can come out with valid points to make their side the winning argument.
But here’s a more important question from The Summing Up chapter of Agoncillo’s book: “Why did Bonifacio succeed where others, more brilliant and educated had failed?”
Here’s Agoncillo’s answer: “Because he was one-sided in outlook, he never bothered to imagine or invent pitfalls, alternative plans and possibilities such as would serve to confuse the mind and weaken one’s resolutions and will-power. It was perhaps to his advantage that he did not have the culture of Rizal whose many-faceted mind generated doubt and fear as to the ability of his people to stand on their own feet. For had Bonifacio dilly-dallied or had he shown the least fear and doubt of results, the Katipunan would never have been what it was. It would have been a tragic failure. As it was, his intellectual shortcomings and weaknesses became his strength. They were, in relation to the revolutionary ideals, his greatest assets.”
I absolutely concur.