Emilio Aguinaldo – Rectifying an Omission
On the twenty-second of this month, over a century ago, a man was born in this province, a man who became in the words of an adversary who respected him, the “incarnation of his people’s aspiration.” He was a man whom we honor by naming this institution of higher learning after him. But he was also a man whom we have not honored enough. The full measure of his worth, of his importance to his nation and its history, lies obscured by controversy and legend.
It is time that we, the beneficiaries of his early exertions, rectify this omission. How many times we have celebrated our independence and the historic events that led to it – the proclamation of the First Republic at Kawit, Biak-na-bato, the event at the Barasoain Church in Malolos, not to mention the accession to independence on July 4, 1946 – which only a passing reference to the man who made all these possible. Generalissimo Emilio Aguinaldo, the first president of the first Filipino republic, father and founder of the Filipino nation.
Is it because after his capture in Palanan in 1901 by American forces he ceased to personify the aspirations of the Filipino people? Or is it because after that date, those aspirations ceased to have any meaning for Filipinos? Either because they had been fulfilled, or, there was no prospect of their fulfillment?
More than three generations of Filipinos have been born since those events of which I speak. It has been seventeen years since he died. It is time that our nation rectify its neglect of this man. For his true worth is now emerging in our consciousness.
In 1964, just after his death, the then president of the Senate, President Ferdinand E. Marcos, said in his eulogy:
“He and his comrades had been forgotten so long by an ungrateful people. Not only had he been forgotten. The soldier had been laughed at and his dreams derided. He had been pilloried and maligned. But he had kept his silence in quiet dignity. And this he knew: that while his body suffered, his cause had triumphed. For he had moulded with his hands and watered with his blood the First Republic established by a brown people.”
This is what truly mattered to General Aguinaldo: his cause had triumphed. This is what we must honor him for. Our nation, ever more grateful as the years go by must do more to keep his memory alive, more than it has ever done before.
For Emilio Aguinaldo was a truly remarkable man. Quite apart from his importance in history, he personified, as General J. Franklin Bell rightly recognized, “the legitimate aspirations of the Filipino people.” He was, as another American admirer (General Arthur MacArthur), the very “incarnation of the revolution.” Only a step removed from the common man, although his family was of the principalia of Kawit, Emilio Aguinaldo did not belong to the ilustrado, that class of western-educated intelligentsia that played such an important role in fomenting revolutionary aspirations and at the same time negating their fulfillment not only in the Philippines but also in other colonized countries. Byu not belonging to that class, but recognizing its potential, Aguinaldo did not fall afoul of its hesitancy – not to mention its vested interest – but he was able at the same time to call on them, bring them into the movement, thus bridging the gap between them and the masses, who followed Aguinaldo’s leadership instinctively and unhesitatingly. Simply put, Aguinaldo had the charisma of leadership of all claases of men.
It was a moment in history when the Filipino people did not want for heroes, martyrs, and models. There were many: the martyr-priests, Rizal, who provided the literature of the revolution, Mabini, who voiced its ideology, Bonifacio, who set the masses in motion. There were lawyers, engineers, doctors, and other educated minds who were available if their intellects were needed to guide a movement and a government. But above all the revolution needed the steadying hand, the courage, and the organizational genius of a leader. It needed a leader who could bring all these scattered elements together, and whip them into a disciplined and effective force. It needed a leader who could weld disunited and often antagonistic factions into a unified and coherent movement. It needed a leader who could lead an army into battle, wage a war, organize a government, and establish a Republic for the first time in the history of that people. The Filipino people found such a man in Emilio Aguinaldo.
The full extent of the neglect by us of that part of our history is only now emerging, and we have missed the opportunity to recognize great service to the nation by a leader while he was still with us. If a revolution devours its sons, he was surely one of its victims. He did what he could best do, and that was to lead a revolution, overcome a colonial oppressor, establish a revolutionary government, and wage war against a new colonizer, all in the space of five short years, with pitiful resources and no foreign aid, in the end, ranged against one of the most powerful countries on earth. If, after all, his achievements, he did not become something of a leader, that was not his fault. Neither was it the fault of the American regime that it did not accord the recognition that he so richly deserved, for he was the embodiment, in the eyes of that regime, of resistance. Thus, he was glossed over in the search for symbols for the Filipino people. The true record of his achievements is now available to us, lately in a work of Mr. Aflredo Saulo, and it will, I am certain, set the record straight.
In our search for symbols, we are likely to romanticize history at the expense of the less flamboyant, quiet, but solid achievement. The brilliance of certain personalities in our history cannot be gainsaid, but the larger picture is what counts most. Ours was the first successful revolution against a colonial master in Asia. Ours was the First Republic and the first Democratic Constitution of a liberated people. Ours antedated the Chinese Revolution, it was the first guerrilla war in Asia waged by a colonized people against not only one, but two, colonial powers, antedating Vietnam by a good fifty years.
Generalissimo Emilio Aguinaldo deserves a larger and more central place in the history of our struggle for self-determination and our national liberation. For he was the leader who made all these “firsts” possible. His was a sustained drive toward the full independence of the Philippines, which came to grief only because at that time it was not yet fashionable for colonial peoples to be freed from the yoke of colonial rule, denying Aguinaldo the assistance of the International Community. For the rest of his, Aguinaldo had to watch on the sidelines as Filipinos lost their revolutionary ardor and their perspective on history.
It is not too late to regain that perspective and pay our debt to this man. Aguinaldo's life, his career as a soldier, statesman, and leader of men have all the necessary elements of a truly great national hero. He was respected by all his adversaries. The Spanish naturally feared him. The American consul and war correspondent who knew him says of him: “In the nineteenth century there has not been a more unique figure among the native races of the earth than this Tagalog patriot.” It is only the Filipino people who have not honored him properly. It is time that they did so.
May I suggest that the name of the province of Cavite be changed to Aguinaldo and that a monument be erected in his memory on the Luneta. These are tributes that he fully deserves in the same manner that the name of the province of Tayabas was changed to Quezon and the province Rizal (formerly Morong) was named after our national hero. It is not too late to glorify with visible honors a great hero who had the courage, the wisdom, and the vision to lead our country in an unequal fight to achieve our freedom. His was the first attempt and with the limited means at his disposal, he succeeded in winning victory after victory against the forces of what was once a powerful colonial empire.
For by doing so, by putting his memory back in the heart of every Filipino man, woman, and child, as they had done in the case of Rizal, Bonifacio, Mabini, they would be doing themselves a great service, just as they would if they were to pay greater homage to Lapu-Lapu, Diego Silang, Dagohoy, Sultan Kudarat, and others who kept the flame of freedom and dignity alive and contributed to that nationhood which today we have begun to fully realize.
The habiliments of a traditional hero sutied him ill – he was shy, prudent to a fault and remarkably unassertive. But he had one shining virtue: He had the will of iron in his undeviating pursuit of the ideals of his people.
National heroes come in different molds. Nehru and Washington were patricians. But to find the closest analogue to Aguinaldo, we have to go back to classical times. He was the Cincinnatus of the Philippines, called to action by popular claim and by his own overriding sense of duty.
Of General Aguinaldo it can be said in the words of a great poet:
“Those who were truly great,
Who wore in their hearts The fire’s centre
Born of the sun, They traveled briefly in the sun.
And left the vivid air
Singed with their honour.”
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