Pilgrimage to Bacong
The late great drummer Winston Velez led a rock band called “Leon Kilat” in the ’70s. The famous Budoy continued this journey by following up with his own reggae group called “Junior Kilat.” Last week, the experimental performance-art group “XO?” joined in with their own “Sigbinikilat,” a performance-art-pilgrimage series that culminated in a performance for primary public school students at the Bacong municipal plaza, Negros Oriental, on July 4. The plaza holds Leon Kilat’s monument, a fitting marker for the town where Leon Kilat was born.
Leon Kilat is a formidable historical figure. He led Cebu’s Katipunan revolt that is marked by his men’s victory at a spot in the city now called Tres de Abril. There are historical accounts of this story. But the historical accounts although colorful by itself fail to tell the complete Leon Kilat story. From the beginning, Kilat constructed himself as a heroic figure of myth. Only in the spirit of myth can his story be truly told and appreciated.
Kilat is a figure of myth and this was not accidental. The reading of his story clearly shows how he himself spawned his own mythology and used it his fight against the colonial masters. Armed only with bolos and spears his men needed a devise that would somehow embolden them to go against their well armed enemies. It is recorded history that to do this, Kilat made for his men vests made of cloth on, which he inscribed magical symbols and incantations in corrupted Latin. Latin was the language of God, as local mythology goes. It was the language of prayer. What Kilat did was to remove the words from their original context and appropriate them for his own end. This was to empower his men and protect them from bullets fired by their colonial enemies, the Spanish.
This is history but it is myth which gives the story its complete and true color. As the Maker’s late father, Venancio, told the story, Kilat would stand atop his horse armed only by his magical bulletproof vest. Balanced this way, he would run his horse all about the walls of Fort San Pedro inviting the Spanish soldiers to fire at him. In this way, he demonstrated to his men how they would be invulnerable to Spanish guns. In this way, he constructed his own mythology and it was always pointed towards a very specific end. One may call it superstition. But the more disinterested view would indicate this was also a most effective strategy for winning a war against an enemy who had the advantage of arms. Here we see how important mythology can be especially for an oppressed people seeking their own liberation. It is in this sense more powerful than arms and, indeed, more powerful than even the current ideologies.
And it is the concept of power that is central in the Leon Kilat narrative. As a young boy, the Maker was taught these lines of high poetry by his own father: Si Leon Kilat, Naglatay-latay sa dagat / Walay laing gisugat, Gyera ug gubat (Leon Kilat over water walking / Does not meet anything, But battle and fighting)
To understand these lines one would have to refer to another facet of the Kilat mythology which tells how Kilat would be fighting the Spanish in Cebu one day and then in Negros the next. This might have been the source of the name “Kilat.” Did he have the power to bilocate? Bilocate is a foreign word and we would be missing the point completely unless we used the local word sigbin.
Sigbin is a creature of myth essential in the Leon Kilat narrative. To tell his story without telling also the story of the sigbin is to miss the point entirely. The story cannot stand the erasure. It would lose all its color, its wonder, and the essential elements of its meaning. Which is why most of the historical accounts make Leon Kilat out to be a a rather two-dimensional monochromatic hero not too worthy of note. Notice for instance how the story of the hero’s death seems always to us essential in the hero’s narrative. This was true especially for Rizal. And yet the story of Leon Kilat’s death is almost entirely erased from the narrative. We see him as a heroic figure sitting majestic astride his horse. But how did he die? And what is being taught in schools about the conditions surrounding finally his death? Why is this story untold and almost erased entirely notwithstanding that Leon Kilat certainly is, if measured by the number of monuments to his name, the most remembered and honored of all the Cebuano revolutionary heroes?
The reason has to do with the inherently subversive nature of the sigbin. The sigbin was a creature more feared by Kilat’s killers than even the hero himself.
The sigbin was a dark creature out of reach of the Spanish narratives. It was a creature of power made more powerful by the fact that it had be given away to someone else. In this way, the creature becomes also a figure of poetry. It becomes metaphor to the revolution itself. The sigbin’s owner can never die unless he gives the creature to someone else. But he can suffer and feel pain. He can grow old and sick. Even so, he cannot die unless he passes the sigbin. Death for the mythical hero can only be voluntary. It can only be heroic. The hero must eventually die but his legacy must also always continue. The legacy is bigger than the hero himself. The story of the search for liberation does not ever end. It can only persist. And in the end we cannot help but say: “The hero is dead but the sigbin lives. It is out there somewhere.” (To be concluded on Sunday.)
