Nat’l historical agency recognizes Pampanga’s socialist mayor

Officials of the City of San Fernando and the National Historical Commission of the Philippines unveil a historical marker honoring Vivencio Cuyugan. —TONETTE OREJAS

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO—The National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) has granted state recognition to Vivencio
B. Cuyugan, the first socialist mayor in the country when rebels turned this Pampanga capital into a “little Russia” shortly before and during World War II.

A historical marker recognizing Cuyugan as a champion of social justice was unveiled on Tuesday by NHCP Executive Director Ludovico Badoy and San Fernando Mayor Edwin Santiago.

Cuyugan, born on Jan. 13, 1895, served as mayor of San Fernando from 1937 to 1942 and in 1945. He was among the founders of the Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon (Hukbalahap) of the merged Socialist Party of the Philippines (SPP) and Communist Party of the Philippines in 1941. Hukbalahap fought the invading Japanese army.

In 1945, the American colonial government removed Cuyugan from office because of his leadership in the Hukbalahap. After World War II, he fought for the rights of farmers and workers. He was jailed and tortured together with his family in Camp Crame in 1953 on a charge that he was a communist. He died in 1971.

Vivencio Cuyugan Jr. said his father first learned socialism through Clarence Darrow, his lawyer in the 1926 “big Chicago brawl.”

Vivencio Cuyugan

The elder Cuyugan, who supported his law studies at Northwestern University through boxing, landed in jail after he defended his friend, a certain Marasigan from Batangas province. The latter lost an ear when apparent racists ganged up on him in a bar where Filipinos were banned.

Filipinos in the United States pooled funds and hired Darrow to defend Cuyugan. He was freed in no time.

“Darrow was a theoretical socialist,” Cuyugan Jr. said in an interview at the family compound in Barangay Del Pilar here which hosts the monument honoring Cuyugan as a local hero.

Cuyugan’s influence in socialism grew when he joined Pedro Abad Santos, a Kapampangan who founded the SPP after studying at the Lenin University in Moscow. The founding was variously dated in 1929 and 1932.

Cuyugan is also remembered for defending the environment as he fought the Pampanga Sugar Development Co., whom the socialists had accused of polluting the San Fernando River. He gave away several of the family’s lands to farmers and also supported labor unions.

“Our young people have a great patriot to emulate,” Santiago told students during the unveiling ceremony. —TONETTE OREJAS