To the cadets of the Philippine Military Academy

General Ramon J. Farolan asked me the other week if I could talk before the cadets of the Philippine Military Academy about Gregorio del Pilar and the battle of Tirad Pass on Dec. 2, 1899. In the ‘50s when I was with the old Manila Times, I visited the PMA and saw the entrance exams that the cadets took that year. I was stunned; had I taken the test, I would have surely flunked.

It is for this reason that I have such a high regard for graduates of the Academy. If they join the Army, they are made to retire at the age of 55 — such talents are surely wasted; they should continue serving in spite of the criticism that by doing so, the government is being militarized.

This is what I told them:

Let me salute you for you are truly anointed. You are also distinguished from the elites of the Armed Forces of other countries, particularly those in South America. In these countries, military leaders usually come from the upper classes. Like me, many of you come from the masa and I pray that you don’t forget where you come from.

The other reason why I honor you is because you have chosen a vocation that demands supreme service — and sacrifice. Soldiering is like writing, teaching, the priesthood, medicine. But what gives the soldier nobility is this: only he is pledged to die for his country.

You are all aware of the puny tradition to which you now belong, a tradition that requires patient and enduring nurturing. Our Army is young like our country. Through our tribal past, we have had courageous warriors, Lapu-Lapu, Palaris, Dagohoy, Diego Silang. It was not till 1896 that our Armed Forces got organized, and since then — Tirad Pass and Bataan.

That first Revolutionary Army in 1896 was led by officers from the principalia, cultured ilustrados, some of whom studied in Europe but were never really schooled for military leadership. General Artemio Ricarte was a teacher, General Manuel Tinio, like General Emilio Aguinaldo, was a landlord. Andres Bonifacio, who founded the Katipunan, was middle class.

Only General Antonio Luna, who was a pharmacist, studied military tactics, guerrilla war, military organization in Europe before he returned to the Philippines in 1897. In 1898, he established the Academia Militar in Malolos with instructors who had training in the Spanish They knew how superior the Americans were to the Spaniards, not because they witnessed the destruction of the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay but because they saw their resources, their equipment. They understood how the war would eventually be waged — not by conventional means but by guerrillas.

Before he was assassinated in Cabanatuan, General Luna and Bishop Gregorio Aglipay went to the North to reconnoiter the final redoubt of the beleaguered, bedraggled Revolutionary Army. The flight of General Aguinaldo towards Mount Tirad was planned but executed rather late.

The strategy was to proceed to Cagayan Valley, much of which at the time was still jungle and on to the Sierra Madre. The first of the four routes to the Valley was the Santa Fe trail beyond San Jose in Nueva Ecija, but the Americans had sealed that route by landing a force in San Fabian in Pangasinan which then cut through the province to San Jose. The Villaverde trail through the Caraballo range in eastern Pangasinan was much too difficult. Then there is Bessang Pass through Cervantes in Ilokos Sur and, a short distance to the North, the more accessible Tirad Pass beyond Candon.

The Americans knew of the larger Filipino brigade already in the North commanded by General Manuel Tinio; they feared that Aguinaldo would join the Brigade.

In their flight, Aguinaldo and his party were ahead of the Americans by only a few hours.

The Aguinaldo party had already crossed Tirad but knowing that the Texas Rangers, 500 of them, were so close. General del Pilar decided to go back with 60 of his men to delay their advance.

I wrote a series of five novels, the Rosales saga, and the first in the series recalls the martyrdom of the three Filipino priests, Gomez, Burgos, and Zamora, in 1872. The novel ends with the Battle of Tirad Pass. In that epic battle of Thermopylae (480 BC) in Ancient Greece, the Spartan King Leonidas and 300 of his men died to a man defending the pass against the invading Persians of Xerxes The Great. The comparison is fitting — as with Thermopylae, Tirad Pass reminds us of our capacity for sacrifice — the ultimate logic of nationalism itself.

On a clear day, Mt. Tirad can be seen on the highway close to Candon. “Tirad” in Ilokano means pointed.

I went there with my wife in the early ‘80s, in January when the Buaya river which courses through those foothills is shallow and can be forded on foot. It was high noon when we reached the beginning of the Pass; I met an old farmer who remembered the rattle of gunfire.

American accounts of that battle that early December morning extol the courage of the Filipino soldier; in fact, in so many of their reports on the Philippine American war are many passages praising such bravery.

We gain many insights from our failed revolution. The first is so obvious, we have, I think, taken it for granted as part of the air we breathe. That Revolution failed; so did the Huk uprising in the ‘50s. The two ongoing rebellions — they are brutal, costly — are also bound to fail. As a people we have never truly united. We have all the institutions of a modern state — a bureaucracy, a justice system, Congress, Armed Forces — but alas, they are all weak because we have yet to be a nation, the way China, Japan and the European countries are nations with clearly defined boundaries and a people bonded tightly together, welded by memory, culture, history and, most of all by the blood shed by their patriots.

Today, we are still Maguindanaos, Tagalogs, Ilokanos, Warays, members of families, clans and dynasties who cannot transcend ethnicity and kinship. It is this factionalism, goaded by personal egoism and the cult of the personality that sunder us. Our colonizers knew this grievous and tragic flaw and it was so easy for them to divide and rule us. The clan wars in Mindanao, in the Ilokos — they date back to the distant past. Always remember, Andres Bonifacio and General Luna were not killed by the Spaniards or the Americans — they were killed by tribal Filipinos.

In a sense, we are like the Japanese in the 15th century when that nation was riven by clan wars, until the Tokugawas defeated all the other clans. But even the Tokugawas couldn’t hold the country together when threatened by Western imperialism. Less than a hundred modernizers from the samurai class of warriors bonded together and transformed Japan. Like Singapore and Korea in the recent past, these nation builders, determined and motivated by ideology overhauled archaic lethargic thinking and habits. In one generation — 20 years — they made Japan strong. Even after defeat in 1945, with the infrastructure intact, Japan became the world’s second richest nation.

The Japanese experience informs us that a few determined leaders can change a disparate and squabbling people into a nation. Remember — the samurai first and foremost were soldiers loyal to a leader, to a nation, and their devotion sprang from a high sense of morality.

Morality — ethics, honor — such lofty ideals! This Academy teaches these things to its cadets. But the code of honor has been violated and you know who these violators are. Have they been punished, or at best, ostracized by PMA graduates?

We all know what afflicts our country today, the appalling poverty which demeans all of us — the result of our soaring population, corruption in government, the profligacy of our leaders, and so many cultural faults inherent in a feudal and agrarian society. But what aggravates this poverty most is the obscene irresponsibility of our elites, our Spanish mestizos, our Filipino Chinese, and our treasonous Indios who send their money abroad, practicing as they do the immoral function of colonialism-exploitation. We see the sordid details of this exploitation all around us, in the mansions of the rich, the fancy shopping malls and condominiums and golf courses — money that should have been invested in infrastructures, in agriculture, in factories so there would be jobs for our people, so we don’t have to send our women abroad to work as housemaids and prostitutes.

Development starts with capital formation; how to build that capital, keep it home, is an elementary economic rule understood even by the simplest housewife.

We have not done this because there is no sense of nation in our very rich, in our political leaders, in most of us.

Listen, nationalism is more than the flag, more than the sunset of Manila Bay, the white sands of our beaches. Nationalism is us — the people, the very poor united by a sense of community, a commitment — not to the welfare of China or Spain, but to Filipinas. The archenemy of nationalism is colonialism, foreign and domestic, and we are poor because we are colonized by our own elites.

To create a nation out of many islands and disunited people was the ideal that inspired the Revolution of 1896. It is still our mission today. And the nation, as often shown by history, rises from the sacrifice of its people, from civil war and revolution. Robespierre, Lenin, Garibaldi, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Tse-Tung — they were revolutionaries but they were also nationalists more than anything, as were Bonifacio, Rizal, Mabini, del Pilar — so many of them for us to remember and follow.

My Rosales saga, a series of five novels set from 1872 to 1972, starts with Poon — the beginning in Ilokano.

When I was researching Poon, I read a lot of history, particularly about the last days of the Spanish regime. I learned about our peasant revolts all through the Spanish era. They were often led by men of intense religious faith and love for the land, the affection that suffuses the peasant for he is closest to the land he worships. For us Ilokanos, the land is Apo Daga, “Apo” being the suffix denoting worship: respect for God (Apo Dios), the sun (Apo Init), even rice (Apo Bagas).

Poon ends with the battle of Tirad Pass. At the New York Public Library, I saw so many splendid photographs taken by American photographers of the period, of that war which they called “an Insurrection” for, by then, the Philippines was already ceded to them by Spain for the paltry sum of 20 million dollars.

There they were, big vivid pictures in black and white of our soldiers felled by American guns, some of the dead in the blue rayadillo uniform. I looked closely at the dead and found out that most of them were in their bare feet, their toes spread “like ginger.” They were farmers who had, all their lives, worked barefoot in the mud.

Do not for once conclude that I am romanticizing the poor. I am only too aware that there is nothing romantic about being poor — it is totally degrading. And sometimes the poor are poor because they are poor, poverty being not just a physical state but an intractable condition of the mind.

Ho Chi Minh, Mao Tse-Tung — they were not poor. Revolutionaries are not necessarily from the poor. Magsaysay, contrary to the notion promoted by his drumbeaters, was not poor but because he was honest, when he died, he did not even leave a house for his family, and when his Malacañang safe was opened, his personal cash was not even a thousand pesos.

But Magsaysay understood the poor, promoted their welfare; his understanding grew when, as a guerrilla leader during the World War II, he recognized the importance of the military — it was his power base.

I have told this story before but let me repeat it for it is meaningful to you. Marcos was still very much in power — this was in the late ‘70s. I was asked to speak before a seminar at the National Defense College in old Fort Bonifacio. My audience was composed of officers, including a couple of brigadiers. The main speaker was the late Secretary of Justice Ricardo Puno and I was to give a 10-minute reaction to his speech. I immediately deviated and, instead, recounted the heroism of the Filipino soldier. I said that the officer corps is composed mostly of PMA graduates and, as such, they came from the poor. But when these PMA graduates rose to power when they became generals, they forgot where they came from, they joined the oligarchy in exploiting the people.

I expected sullen silence. I got an ovation instead.

What does this old man see as the role of the military? First and foremost the Army must hold this country together — prevent anarchy if it implodes, and be on the side of a truly nationalist leader if a revolution does come. Above all it must be intact, united, support a Magsaysay if someone like him may come again. I am sure he is waiting in the wings, for a new generation is coming up to undo the havoc my generation wrought on this unhappy land. It is such an awful cliché, but it is also so true — my hope, our fondest hope is in you who are so bright and so young.

In the beginning of this presentation, I said that only the soldier is pledged to die for his country. At the moment, as we all know, our soldiers are dying, fighting brother Moros and brother rebels — most of whom come also from the masa. Your PMA colleague, General Jose Almonte with General Fidel Ramos — they were young then in the Sierra Madre fighting the Huks; both recognized this awful truth as recorded in General Almonte’s latest book Leveling the Playing Field.

If you should give up your most precious possession, it should not be for the status quo, or for the rich and powerful — it should be for the masa, for our freedom, just as Gregorio del Pilar gifted this country with his life on that lonely pass 110 years ago.

You are his heirs. Even without knowing it, or exulting in it the genes of our epic history are entwined in your tissues for indeed, you, we Filipinos are a heroic people.