Remembering Andres Bonifacio

It’s a cloudy Monday and the whole family is resting and paying sleep debts. Long weekends have become occasions for relaxing and catching up on chores. We’ve forgotten what the holiday is about and are just grateful to be able to stay home and do nothing. This must be the effect of holiday economics. Only a friend’s posting of a stamp with the picture of Andres Bonifacio in Facebook reminded me that we are celebrating his short life.

My son’s periodical exams last week had me scanning his books to check what he was learning in school. For Araling Panlipunan, his class was studying the Propaganda Movement and the Revolution. A few paragraphs in his textbook were devoted to Andres Bonifacio—that he was an orphan, sold fans and canes for a living, founded the Katipunan, translated works of Jose Rizal from Spanish to Tagalog and used these works to inspire the masses to join the Revolution against Spain, and, together with his brother, was killed by rivals in Cavite.

It was information that I don’t remember coming across in grade school, high school, and college. In comparison to the life and works of Rizal, which we studied for two years in high school and a semester in college, the life of Andres Bonifacio and what he stood for in Philippine history did not figure prominently in our lessons. If he appeared in an exam, it was probably in answer to the question: Who is the Supremo of the Katipunan? It was information useful for trivia contests but there was very little information about him useful for understanding what his role was in Philippine history.

The same can be said about the statues depicting Andres Bonifacio. I’ve only seen three—one in Caloocan City, another one outside Vinzon’s Hall in UP Diliman, and at a road intersection in a town in Iloilo. In contrast, every town plaza in the Philippines seems to have a statue of Jose Rizal.

I’ve read several articles blaming the American colonial government for promoting Jose Rizal as the more important hero because he was against armed struggle. Andres Bonifacio was not someone to be remembered in shrines and landmarks built upon orders of the colonizers because he called on people to fight for freedom by joining the Revolution. The elite who took over from the colonizers wanted the status quo and continued the injustice. It’s an interesting debate that unfortunately is mostly discussed only in the academe.

I’m just happy that my son’s Philippine history textbook is a lot better than the ones I had in elementary school and high school. It cites Reynaldo Ileto’s “Pasyon at Rebolusyon” and has stories on “anting-anting” and cults who joined the Revolution hoping to restore the Philippines to the paradise it was before the Spaniards arrived. It has several chapters on the Filipino-American war, including a section on the Balangiga Massacre.

It might be a while before we see more monuments and sites commemorating the life not only of Andres Bonifacio but also that of other persons who played important roles in national and local history. There is an abundance of stories that never make it to textbooks for Filipino students from grade school to college. Those who had history teachers who required students to read materials apart from the assigned textbooks were actually lucky. For those of us who are done with school, it is never to late to learn more. There is always the Internet and our children’s textbooks.

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