Declaring Bonifacio nat’l hero ‘long shot’

MARAGONDON, Cavite—Descendants of Filipino revolutionary Andres Bonifacio called the House bill seeking to name him a national hero a welcome move to finally give the Katipunan leader the recognition he deserved.

But National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) Commissioner Rene Escalante said such initiative would entail “a lot of documentation and argumentation.”

Bayan Representatives Neri Colmenares and Carlos Zarate earlier filed a House bill seeking to declare Bonifacio a national hero.

The Manila city council, on the other hand, passed an ordinance recognizing him as the first Philippine president of the revolutionary government.

“I don’t want to preempt [the passage of the House bill].  I think that will  be a long shot,” Escalante said at the sidelines of the 150th birth anniversary of Bonifacio here on Saturday.

The local government of this town held the annual commemorative program at the little-known Mt. Nagpatong, the first time it did here in several years, where Bonifacio and his brother Procopio were executed on May 10, 1897.

The remote site, about 5 kilometers from the town proper, was declared a memorial shrine by the NHCP in 1979. The first-term mayor of Maragondon town, Rey Rillo, said they also planned to turn the shrine into an eco-tourism park.

Aside from contentions on whether or not Bonifacio should be recognized the first Philippine president, the controversy involving the hero’s trial, which also took place in this town, and execution  continued to divide historians and politicians, Escalante, who was invited as guest speaker, said.

Unlike in the case of National Hero Jose Rizal, “what makes it painful was that the people behind [Bonifacio’s] execution were his fellow Filipinos. It’s an embarrassment that a Supremo was killed by his own organization,” he said.

Escalante, in his speech, said  Bonifacio’s execution was fueled by politics, the reason his death anniversary was less remembered and seldom talked about.

He also disputed “textbook thoughts” that Bonifacio and the members of the Katipunan were “poor and uneducated,” pointing out historical accounts that Bonifacio in fact owned books on American revolution and those authored by Victor Hugo and Rizal himself.

He said, unknown to many, Bonifacio’s parents were a “tinyente mayor” and a Spanish mestiza in Tondo and that he used to work for a British-owned warehouse before the war broke out.