Tantingco: The Other Side of Kapampangans

Monday, February 6, 2012

THE Kapampangan farmers of Hacienda Luisita who fought tooth and nail to own the land that they and their ancestors have tilled for centuries are only being true to their nature: Kapampangans were, are and will always be… rebels.

Huh?!

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Weren’t Kapampangans the Spaniards’ best friends and their “loyal companions of our disgraces and our glories,” as Jose Felipe del Pan wrote in 1858?

Didn’t Kapampangans help the Americans capture Aguinaldo in 1901, which forced him to surrender the country to the United States?

The quick and easy answer to those two questions would be yes.

Kapampangans really defended their colonial masters even if it meant having to fight their fellow Filipinos, and even their fellow Kapampangans.

But you must understand that the concept of nation as we know it today did not yet exist at the time. There was no Philippines, only tribes or regions who imagined themselves as nations independent from one another.

Like Tagalogs, Ilocanos, Cebuanos, etc., Kapampangans had to make compromises with the colonizers to survive. The difference is that because Kapampangans excelled in everything that they did, they became the colonizers’ favorites.

For example, because of their bravery and military skills, Kapampangans were recruited into the Spanish Army and got promoted. Because of their academic excellence, Kapampangans were admitted into seminaries and royal colleges, which is why the first Filipino priests, nuns, doctors, etc. were Kapampangans.

While some Kapampangans enjoyed their favored status with the colonizers, and returned the favor, the vast majority of Kapampangans were seething with discontent at the colonizers’ abuses.

Kapampangans were already staging revolts against Spaniards within a few years after the colonizers landed in Luzon in 1571. In fact, the first Filipino to have died resisting the Spaniards was “a brave youth from Macabebe” (called Tarik Soliman by some historians).

Barely a dozen years later, in 1584, Kapampangans who had been sent to forced labor in the Cordillera gold mines led an uprising against the Spaniards. In 1585, Kapampangans rose up in arms again, this time against the encomienda system, where they had to pay taxes for their own harvests.

In 1586, Kapampangans in Candaba did the same thing, against Spaniards who seized their harvest and livestock, raped their women and insulted the men by calling them sodomites, drunkards and “other painful names.”

In 1645, it was the Kapampangans in Gapan, Nueva Ecija who revolted, and in 1660, Francisco Maniago of Mexico, a former ranking officer in the Spanish army, led the Great Kapampangan Revolt, which inspired similar uprisings in Pangasinan and Ilocos.

Towards the end of the Spanish Period, Bonifacio founded the Katipunan together with some Kapampangan patriots, including literary writer Aurelio Tolentino of Guagua. Rizal likewise counted on his Kapampangan friends for support, including Antonio Consunji of San Fernando and Ruperto Lacsamana of Mexico whom he visited in Pampanga in 1892, and Jose Alejandrino of Arayat who helped bind the original El Filibusterismo, and Valentin Ventura of Bacolor who lent him money to publish it.

Agapito Conchu of Guagua was among the first martyrs of the Revolution, known as the Trece Martires of Cavite. Alejandrino, Maximino Hizon of Mexico, Francisco Makabulos of La Paz and Servillano Aquino of Concepcion were all generals of the Revolution and the Philippine-American War.

Even Kapampangan poets like Juan Crisostomo Soto, Mariano Proceso Pabalan Byron and Felix Galura put down their pens and picked up arms during the revolution against Spain and the war against the United States which followed. Kapampangan women, too, like Praxedes Fajardo, Adriana Hilario, Nicolasa Dayrit and Matea Sioco actively took part in the struggle for independence.

When the Japanese occupied the Philippines, it was Luis Taruc of San Luis and his Kapampangan comrades who founded the Hukbalahap. And it was Kapampangans who founded leftist and dissident groups like the Socialist Party of the Philippines (Pedro Abad Santos of San Fernando), New People’s Army (Bernabe Buscayno of Capas), Kabataang Makabayan (Nilo Tayag of Porac), National Democratic Front (Satur Ocampo of Sta. Rita) and Kilusang Mayo Uno (Felixberto Olalia of Tarlac).

There was a time when Pampanga was known as the Little Russia, “where it is not the voice of judges and jurists that prevails, but the voice of Lenin and Stalin,” wrote Justice Leopoldo Rovira in 1941. The first Socialist to be elected mayor was a Kapampangan, Vivencio Cuyugan of San Fernando. The pre-war mayors of Angeles, Mabalacat, Arayat, Floridablanca, Mexico, San Luis and San Simon were also Socialists.

Throughout Pampanga, farmers wearing red shirts, waving red flags and singing Communist hymns staged nightly torch parades; landowners cringed in fear every time they heard the sound of tambuli (carabao horn), which signaled the start of peasants’ rallies.

Today, the reputation of Kapampangans is that of a lily-livered, pleasure-seeking and shallow people, who wallow in their vanity and self-indulgence and who cannot be trusted.

However, their history of rebelliousness, patriotism and commitment to social justice shows that Kapampangans aren’t what they seem, but are, in reality, made of tougher stuff.

Otherwise, how could they have survived the nightmare that was Mount Pinatubo?