While we're on the subject of Aguinaldo and Bonifacio, I can't help but remember another person connected with Aguinaldo. Gregorio del Pilar, born November 14, 1875, goes down in Philippine history as the youngest general of the Revolutionary Army, called the "boy general". He died on December 2, 1899, a Brigadier General at age 24, at Tirad Pass, covering Aguinaldo's retreat with 60 men against 3000 American soldiers-- the circumstances of his death were so much like an old Greek legend that he was referred to by some as the "Leonidas of the Philippines" and Tirad Pass as our local version of Thermopylae. (300, anyone?) Hey, to be compared to a Spartan, a member of a race best known in history for their bravery, discipline, and honor (ever read the story about the Spartan boy with the fox under his coat?), is no small thing.

I read Wilfredo Pascual's blog entry about how del Pilar's bones were exhumed in 1930 and brought to the municipal hall of Concepcion, Ilocos Sur, the nearest town to Tirad Pass. That town was later renamed Gregorio del Pilar in 1955, in honor of the boy general. There was a comment by Dr. Ricardo Soler about how some viewed del Pilar as nothing more than a wannabe hoodlum, "a bodyguard of Aguinaldo no different from the bodyguards of politicians who tell their masters, 'Boss, tirahin na lang natin 'yan. (Boss, let's just take him out.)' "

Huh.

As a child, I was taught about del Pilar's loyalty to Aguinaldo, so that he ultimately died to defend his President. Knowing more about Aguinaldo now than I did before, I can't help but marvel at his misplaced loyalty, but well, he did what he felt was right. According to Teodoro A. Agoncillo's History of the Filipino People, after Gregorio del Pilar's death, Major March, his American opponent, found the boy general's diary. In it, del Pilar had written:

" The General [ Aguinaldo ] has given me the pick of all the men that can be spared and ordered me to defend the Pass. I realize what a terrible task has been given me. And yet, I felt that this is the most glorious moment of my life. What I do is done for my beloved country. No sacrifice can be too great. "

Gregorio del Pilar's body was not buried until several days after his death. American soldiers left his corpse almost naked, stripping it of all valuables for "souvenirs". (And they called us Filipinos barbarians--- pwe!) Finally, an American officer, Lt. Dennis Quinlan, found his body and ordered him buried. It is said that Quinlan admired del Pilar's courage so much that he had an marker placed on del Pilar's grave which read:

GENERAL GREGORIO DEL PILAR; KILLED AT THE BATTLE OF TIRAD PASS, DECEMBER 2D, 1899; COMMANDING AGUINALDO´S REAR GUARD- AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN. (emphasis mine)


The pic of del Pilar on Wikipedia makes him look dandified. His legs are crossed, his right hand is in his tunic, he looks like he's leaning on his sword.

But I found another pic of Gregorio del Pilar on Filipiniana.net. (it's the first pic that comes up when you google search for "general gregorio del pilar"). It's a full-body black and white picture; there's what looks like a house behind him, and perhaps pandan or some tall grass, and palm fronds. His wide-brimmed hat is on the grass near his feet. The boy general is wearing his uniform: a white tunic with epaulets, and dark trousers tucked into high boots. He has a sword hanging from his belt, his arms are crossed. From a distance, you might label it as just another picture of an officer in the Revolutionary Army, and not look any closer.

But this is del Pilar. It was those crossed arms that did it for me, I guess. I was immediately struck by how, in different clothes, and in another time, he might look just like one of my guy kabarkadas when I was still in high school. You know the pose that boys aged 12 to 25 often strike for photographs, trying to look tough and not seem vulnerable. His left shoulder was angled higher than his right, his feet slightly apart. He seems to look off into the distance. Hey, so he looked like some of my friends did in CAT uniforms, I think some of my friends even looked more mature than him. And I'm betting that like all boys, he didn't know what destiny lay ahead of him at Tirad Pass.

I am reminded of the words of Thetys to her son Achilles in the movie "Troy":

"If you stay in Larisa...you will find peace. You will find a wonderful woman. You will have sons and daughters, and they will have children. And they will love you. When you are gone, they will remember you.But when your children are dead and their children after them... your name will be lost.

If you go to Troy...glory will be yours. They will write stories about your victories for thousands of years. The world will remember your name. But if you go to Troy... you will never come home. For your glory walks hand in hand with your doom."

I really must study Spanish. I keep wanting to study that language but never really got down to it. Since we Pinoys have a lot of Spanish words in our language (so does English, actually), I can get the gist of Spanish when reading or hearing it, but not really accurately. Lamentably, I am of the generation that no longer had Spanish as a compulsory subject in college, so I have to make do with cocina, cuchillo, cuchara and etc. :p

Anyway, the reason I am so peeved with my poor Spanish is because there are a lot of interesting old documents being published on Filipiniana.net, in the original Spanish text, that I am simply itching to read! (Gosh, that sounds like Mindy, the Wikipilipinas avator...) Really, I mean come on. I have always liked history, and who hasn't wanted to be a treasure hunter? Indiana Jones. Sydney Fox (Tia Carrere in Relic Hunter). Lara Croft. Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz in The Mummy. Allan Quatermain in King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard (yup, I read that!). Amelia Peabody and Radcliffe Emerson. Gabriela and Elias in Asian Treasures. Our fascination with the Golden Buddha and the Yamashita Treasure. Even Heinrich Schliemann and Troy, for goodness' sake. Many treasure hunts start with old documents. And also, the old documents are treasures in themselves. The knowledge they impart are is a treasure in its own right (makes me think of the ten scrolls in Og Mandino's "The Greatest Salesman in the World"--- love that book!).

One of the biggest shocks I have ever had in my whole life was reading about Andres Bonifacio being betrayed by the Katipunan he had worked so hard for. I forgot the title of the book, which my tita brought home from one of those librarian's conferences she often attends, when I was still in college (the late 1990's). Anyway, my knowledge of Andres Bonifacio was limited to this person so often depicted in paintings and monuments, the man who looked like a farmer in a camisa de chino and rolled-up trousers, with a red bandana around his neck, pointing forward with a bolo in his hand, his mouth open in a perpetual cry of "sugod mga kapatid!" (which is an apocryphal image, so historians now tell us). Who was Andres Bonifacio? Ah, isn't he that guy connected with the Katipunan? The one who tore up his cedula at the Cry of Balintawak? The guy who was orphaned young, who made and sold fans to keep his family alive, the one who brought up his younger brothers and sisters? The one who led the Revolution? His wife was Gregoria de Jesus, right? Bits and pieces of trivia-- that was all I knew about Andres Bonifacio. I never really got the picture of how hard it would have been for him, all the legwork that went into founding a secret society and keeping it alive enough to form the foundation for a revolution, the hard work that went into conducting the revolution itself, all because this man loved his country. He had a dream, and he wanted to make it real. In the end, he was betrayed and killed by people who later sold away his dream for their own personal convenience. After reading that book, I somehow wished that my knowledge about Bonifacio had indeed stopped at knowing he was the Supremo of the Katipunan and the Father of the Revolution, because reading about what happened to him later was like watching a really sad episode of "Maalaala Mo Kaya"... it left an ache in my heart.

Now, long years later, Filipiniana.net published the Philippine Revolutionary Records, all full texts of original documents from the Philippine Revolution, including the records of the Bonifacio court martial (gusto kong barilin si Aguinaldo, pramis!) and later Aguinaldo's justification of his order to have Bonifacio executed (gusto ko na talagang barilin si Aguinaldo, buti na lang patay na rin siya!) saying, in effect, that it was either him or Bonifacio, and like any person who wanted to preserve his own worthless hide, he chose himself, of course, wouldn't anyone else have done the same? (I wonder what Gat Andres would have done had the roles been reversed. And yes, he does deserve that "Gat" before his name!)

At least the Bonifacio Court Martial was in Tagalog (Pinoy na Pinoy) so I had no trouble reading it (the trouble was with my reactions to it, I mean it was all so long ago, but that doesn't help the indignation I feel!). Now Filipiniana.net has published the "El Indio Agraviado", written in 1821, which is considered the Manifesto, a first manifestation of Filipino nationalism. Original text is in Spanish, which is why I am so bummed about my Spanish-language skills! well, anyway, I guess I have to be content for now with the Google translation, although I do wish Filnet would publish a translation (sige na po...)!

"El Indio Agraviado" literally means "the injured native" --- we still use the term "agraviado" or "agrabyado" today to mean "disadvantaged". Anyway, the context of "El indio" was this: a "political scientist" states in the publication "Noticioso Filipino" that the educational system in the Philippines should be reformed because the native was ignorant, inept, inferior, a thief, and a lot of other epithets that make my ears smoke (pati bumbunan ko umuusok ah!), but then, if the native were educated he would use his learning to write against the Spaniards and feel like their equal. Argh. If you think today's people are bigots, try the 17th century! Thank Bonifacio and his companions for the Revolution, in fact while we're at it, thank all the nationalists who fought so hard for our independence.

Anyway, at least one of the "natives" this bigoted "political scientist" talked of must've been very indignant, because he denounced the statements of this person in a piece which is, you guessed right, "el indio agraviado", and el indio agraviado he must remain because the piece is anonymous and no one knows who this early nationalist really was. "El indio agraviado" said, among others, that if the natives are ignorant, it is the result of two and a half centuries under Spanish rule, and that a person is likely to become a thief if you deny him his rightful income. He goes on to say that the contemptuous attitude of the Spaniards towards the natives was unconstitutional because they all belonged to one nation. Now that's telling them!

Weeelll.... it was not in a foreign country. But never has it been so brought home to me how diverse the different peoples of the Philippines are, until I spent Christmas and New Year with my er, hum, biyenang hilaw, in Bulacan.

At home in Mindanao, during Christmas, we did have the misa de aguinaldo and karoling. I remember balking like a stubborn carabao when my dad ordered me to go visit my ninongs and ninangs on Christmas morning.. (I was a shy child and still get attacks of shyness at times even in adulthood... I am not at ease with people I barely know, even if they are related to me in some way. Just ask my boyfriend's mom how hard it is to coax me to circulate during occasions at their house!) As a child and all through adolescence, I thought myself fortunate that I had thoughtful ninongs and ninangs (almost all of whom lived on the same street) who remembered to give me a little something on birthdays and Christmas. Others rarely received anything from ninongs and ninangs except for the obligatory christening (or wedding) gift. At home, we didn't go out on the day before Christmas because my dad believed that we should all be at home helping with the preparations for noche buena. We'd then go to the midnight mass, come home to eat noche buena, then pretend to go to sleep. In reality, the adults (and the ones old enough to stop pretending Santa Claus was real) took turns slipping into the sala to leave their presents under the tree (all of them "from Santa" including the polished piece of rattan that my Dad always tagged "for the naughtiest"). Then, on Christmas morning, we all woke up to find that the presents had been sorted into different paper bags tagged with the recipients' names (one of my titas usually did it after everybody else had gone to bed). After all the presents had been opened, admired, and put away, my dad often had us pack up the remains of the noche buena and took us to the beach. Usually I brought my pillow with me and continued sleeping in the beach cottage until noon! Sometimes after we got home in the evening, friends and relatives came to call, but we didn't really expect anyone to make obligatory calls, so it was always a pleasant surprise to see who cared enough to visit.

Christmas in Bulacan was a different experience.

First, there were the namamasko. I woke up on Christmas morning to realize that kids were already waiting in a long line outside the gate, their faces eager in anticipation of goodies. Not only that, but every house they went to was supposed to give them something (usually a crisp twenty peso bill and I mean crisp!) Nanay (what I call my boyfriend's mom) doled out the twenties. For her children's inaanaks (godchildren) (my goodness! my darling was already a godfather before he was ten?!?) and her inaanaks, she also doled out presents and/or money apart from the twenties. Oh my gosh, I thought, I would've wanted to have been a child here, think how much I would've gotten for Christmas! Except that, think of the poor godparents! Now the cliche of the godparent hiding from his inaanak isn't that funny anymore. Luckily, my own godchildren are not so demanding, plus, most of them have wealthy parents so that giving them money for Christmas would've been laughable. Which now underscored another cultural difference between us. I don't know if it was just my family, but in our predominantly Ilonggo community back home, giving money instead of presents was, well, not precisely a no-no, it was just not done. Or maybe people back home didn't have that much money to give away, I'm not sure. Anyway, if we ever went pamamasko back home, it was usually strictly just to godparents and relatives, not the whole barangay.

Then, after the visiting kids had left, the whole family also dressed up for their own turn to go pamamasko! Now I know why most of the people in the family were so gregarious and socially adept. They were used to it from an early age, going to so many different houses and having to make polite conversation and all that. And I heard them comparing notes on who had already visited and who had not yet been by, who gave the best presents and who had the grandest noche buena. "Itong sina ____, sila na lang yata ang hindi pa namasko dine. Dinig ko kay ___ ay nadaan na sila duon, ay bakit napakalapit dine ay hindi pa tumuloy! (The family of ____, they are the only ones who have not been here. I heard from ___ that they went there, so why when we are only nearby, did they not think to come here?)" which brought home to me that these family visits were regarded as social obligations.

Back to the question: do I know who my ancestors are?

I never met my grandfathers. My father's father died when Papa was a little boy (he was born in 1898, so he must've been really old, whew!) . According to family history (or legend), Tiburcio Adorador (or Adulador) Panogot was born in Iloilo during the Philippine Revolution. The original family surname was supposedly Magbanua, but due to a famous member of the family (Teresa Magbanua was said to be a second cousin) who fought during the revolution, my great grandfather supposedly changed the family name because the Spaniards were trying to get at Nanay Isa through her relatives. Although my uncle has been heard to say disparagingly that our ancestors didn't change the family name back to the original one after the danger had passed because they were having too much fun making bandit raids as ostensible Hukbalahap members. Anyway, I'm not sure when my grandfather married my grandmother, but he was 17 years older than she was (she was born in 1915!). They had nine children, all of whom lived past their adolescence, although only four of them got married.

My paternal grandmother, Scholastica (or Escolastica, we called her Lola Kulasing, like Tamblot's wife in the hilarious Yuhum komiks Tamblot) Cumoda Panogot, lived with us until her death when I was in college. The doctor said she died of old age (she was 73, I think). I have these memories of a tiny old woman with wrinkled shiny skin that looked like rippling water, and long, long gray hair that reached to her thighs and that she always kept in a huge bun pinned by a brown barrette. She loved plants and was always sweeping the yard and grubbing around in the garden, and was likely to chase us with a walis tingting if we misbehaved. She always woke me up if I slept late... for years after her death I dreamed about her waking me up and saying "Neng, neng, bugtaw na adlawon na! (Child, wake up it's late morning already!)" If we took naps in the afternoon, she always woke us before sunset, saying that we should not sleep past sundown because the sun will carry our souls with it when it set! According to my old maid titas, Lola was stingy and strict. She didn't allow them to go out with their friends, even in community activities. Although they could well afford it, my tita said, Lola kept all their good clothes and made them wear the old ones over and over again until they were in rags. She told horror stories of how the three of them (all old maids now) always got picked to be Fe, Esperanza, Caridad (Faith, Hope and Charity) during the annual Santacruzan, and Papa was a member of the marching band playing the trombone, but Lola refused to shell out anything for their costumes or even let them attend, so their friends and teachers had to sponsor them and they had to sneak out of the house when Lola was asleep. Anyway, Lola was not very strict with us grandkids!

Apaprently, despite the disparity in ages, there was real affection between my grandparents. Again, my titas say, after Lolo died, the family migrated to Mindanao, and Lola got sick and almost died. When she was resuscitated, she told stories of climbing up a tall flight of stone stairs and when she got to the top, Lolo was waiting for her but he told her that she had to go back, that it wasn't time yet for her to go with him. He said that he would come for her when it was her time to go. During her last days, she kept saying his name and looking over our shoulders as if someone was standing behind us. When Lola finally went to her eternal rest, she was smiling. I wonder if Lolo really did come for her as he once promised!

My mother's father died about 4 years ago (I never met him because I have never been to Mama's homeland of Antique, where he lived). I don't know much about Epifanio Lavega Panaguiton except that he and my grandmother, Alicia Panaligan Lavega, were first cousins! This usually happened in small, isolated communities where almost everybody was related; despite taboos, people often ended up marrying relatives. In fact, the maternal side of the family is more tangled than a skein of thread that the cat had rolled in. When I was a child, I took it for granted that the same relatives came to every family occasion such as KBLs (kasal, binyag, libing or weddings, baptisms, and funerals)... it was only when I got old enough to think for myself that I found myself questioning why, if these people were on the Panaguiton side and these on the Lavega side, they attended occasions on both sides of the family. Lola Alice is still alive and well, thank goodness. She used to travel back and forth between Antique and Mindanao every so often, so I saw her a lot. Mama used to tease her that she was temporarily divorced from Lolo since she always left him at home to mind the farm while she traveled all over, visiting their children and grandchildren.

My knowledge of family history ends with my sketchy knowledge of my grandparents. I don't know about my great grandparents except my Lola Kulasing's mother, Cristina Legada Cumoda, whom I was named for. And the only thing I remember about her except for her keyring is the implication that she was a binukot. I recently read an article on GMANews.tv about the binukot of the Visayas, but it doesn't tie in with family legend. There's an article on a Capiznon website that is more to the point however.

According to my tita, the same one who melted down her grandmother's heirloom keyring, her mother's mother came from the beautiful hinterlands of Janiuay, Iloilo. She and her sisters were all binukot. This meant that they were so beautiful that they were kept inside the house all the time, away from public view. They were not allowed to do any work and spent all their time making themselves beautiful. When a binukot came of marrying age, she was offered for marriage to the highest bidder. My tita used to say disparagingly that all her grandmother's sisters were bought and married by the sons of rich hacenderos, and that Lola must have been the least beautiful in the bunch because she married someone who wasn't quite as rich as her sisters' husbands! Unfortunately, all I have to go on is a name, so it's hard for me to verify the truth about this legend. I don't even know if my great-grandmother has any relatives left in Janiuay who might remember her or her family!

Anyway, if anyone reads this and knows about the Legadas and/or Cumodas, and may be able to help me piece together my family tree, I would appreciate it if you left a comment on this post.

There's also another family legend, about a how-so-many-greats grandfather who lived sometime during the Spanish era and who was a folk hero somewhat like Juan Pusong, but that's another story!

When I was able to read a copy of the Catalogo Alfabetico de Apellidos, containing Claveria's order of 21 November 1849 for all Filipinos to change their family names, I found almost all my family's names listed there, which gave me a thrill. When one is looking for one's roots, it's different to know that your family existed now and to know that it was already in existence as a clan way back in the Spanish era (although come to think of it, I wouldn't be here today if my family hadn't existed way back when! haha, silly me!) Based on what I know so far about my family, I might even be able to say that I'm pure Filipino (though highly unlikely, because almost all Pinoys have foreign blood in them somewhere)! Well, that explains my pert nose.

Do you know who your father is?

That was one of the questions our "big boss" asked us, "big boss" being Gus A. Vibal or simply GAV, at Wikipilipinas.org. He said that most Filipinos don't know who their ancestors are. Who is your father? Where and when was he born? At what age did he get married? Where did he live? What did he do?

According to GAV, we Filipinos don't like to look back on the past. It's a sort of passive resistance to all those foreign colonizers... we choose to forget them. Myself, personally, I think it's because for us Filipinos, some memories may be too painful to remember. The problem with that is, we also forget the lessons we should have learned from the bad memories, and we also forget the good things that happened. Look at martial law and EDSA, for one. Twenty, thirty years later, the same thing may happen all over again because of our selective memories.

It reminded me of the time I got furious with my tita because she had my great-grandmother's silver keyring melted down and made into necklaces for my sister and me. She was so surprised at my reaction, reasoning that we could use necklaces but not a heavy, church-key shaped silver thing (who uses keyrings anymore anyway, she asked). What I couldn't make her understand was that the original ring, with its hand-etched design of a wreath of flowers and leaves, and my great-grandmother's (her grandmother's) initials (C. L. C., for Cristina Legada Cumoda) , originally intended to hold the keys to the family homestead, was worth more to me as a link to my great-grandmother and a family heirloom, than a silver necklace, beautiful though it may be. Now, it had become irretrievably lost, like so many other things about my family that we, as a dislocated branch in Mindanao, separated from the original clan in Iloilo, had lost or forgotten about.

That was why I am so keyed up about Wikipilipinas.org and its sister site, Filipiniana.net. They are repositories of Philippine history and culture, of the little-known everyday things that we have and take for granted, of the esoteric, of the painful things, of the good things, of everything that makes us Filipino. Filnet (the affectionate moniker for Filipiniana.net) has in its archives ethnographic studies by Dean Worcester and Daniel Folkmar on Filipinos during the American occupation, trying to classify Pinoys from most primitive to most civilized based on physical characteristics (a theory that went out with the 1900s); the original records on the infamous Andres Bonifacio court-martial and subsequent execution; novels written in Tagalog (and no, they are not popular Tagalog romances but fall into the realm of literary classics, the Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, and the like of Filipino literature); even Pinoy komiks (which take me back to my childhood when I devoured Aliwan, Espesyal, Horror, Funny, Extra, etc., by the armload). Wikipinas, on the other hand, is a repository of popular culture and common knowledge, of the things that we Filipinos have and take for granted but others don't know about, such as Philippine street food (I suddenly have a craving for ice buko, the kind with red monggo at the tip), and Philippine customs (like panunuluyan at Christmas) and even beliefs (I am Visayan by blood, so porya gaba!). Both sites try to capture the things that make us Filipino, things that we should not forget about our identity, and record them before they are gone forever, the way I should have done with my great-grandma's keyring.

After all, don't we Pinoys say (and we should be so good as to take it to heart) :

"Ang hindi lumingon sa pinaggalingan ay hindi makakarating sa paroroonan."
(He who does not look back at where he came from will not reach his destination.)